


The Dare in the Snipe Hunt

by landrews



Category: Bones (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gangs, Historical References, Kidnapping, Native American Character(s), Psychological Torture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-16
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-29 14:33:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 32
Words: 68,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1006536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landrews/pseuds/landrews
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bones and Booth are kidnapped from the site of a mass burial which contains the victims of a serial killer... or does it? Can they figure out who is who in time to stop the killing spree as rival factions take aim at each other in Washington?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers:Set S1 between 'The Soldier On The Grave' and 'Woman In Limbo', though not based on airdates- the time's a little too stretchy for that :-) and Cullen's still working while his fill-ins transition.  
> Disclaimers: No profit, 'Bones' and it's characters owned by Hart Hanson/Fox/et al – no offense or statements intended regarding the Lumbee nation or Mara Salvatrucha - I have used them creatively to my own devious ends.
> 
> Written and completed in 2008/2009.
> 
> Um... Present Tense. Sorry? I didn't ever think it'd be so long...
> 
> Thanks!!!: To starlet2367 whom you can thank for making me scrap a long ass lab scene and swap it for a hard-to-write ensemble scene at Wong Fu's, but which is a lot more fun :grins: and to ares132006 who gave me the nod on the more complete version - they both lend me far more support and praise than I deserve :-)
> 
> Story sources (no, I don't always bookmark, but it's a few of them anyway) at the end.
> 
> I need suggestions for TAGS!

Booth and Ericson are sitting against the Humvee's rear tire, changing their socks. Booth is pulling dead skin from the blister on the ball of his foot when he glances up and sees Matthews is pouring gasoline on a burn pile. A mocha-colored arm is hanging out, bright, beaded bracelets gracing the slender wrist.

"Wait!" Booth yells, as Matthews sets the can down. Booth leaps up, sand hot under his bare foot, and the blister stings. "Wait!"

He runs towards Matthews, who never even looks at him, just strikes a match. The explosion blows back faster than Booth can raise his arms. Hot air batters his face. 

"Daddy," Parker says into his ear.

"What. What?" Booth is muzzy and dazed as he wakes. He can feel Parker standing at his head, by the bed, but then he is awake and Parker is just a dream. He lays there awhile, listening to the empty of his apartment, to the echo of Parker's voice in his head.

Sometime later, his cell rings. Booth picks it up without opening his eyes. "Booth."

It's a quarter to six in the morning and the long and the short of it is that Brennan is going out to the woods of Maryland on loan, with Booth as her keeper.

*

After he knocks on her door at a quarter to eight, bagels in one hand and coffee in the other, he covers the peephole with his index finger. She's on her phone when the door swings open.

"... today. No, do the rest, but I want to see the skull before reconstruction."

Booth stands in the doorway. "Ask who I am."

"What? No, not you, Zach. Yes." 

"Close the door."

She frowns at him. Booth resists her charm and waves the bag of bagels in his left hand at her. She steps back to let him in. "No, I think you'll probably have to use wide-spectrum for that." 

"No, Bones, close the door and ask who I am," Booth says.

"Booth, get in here. Zach, have Hodgins call if he gets anything off the Romanian."

"Not until you ask me."

"Yes." She closes the door. "Thanks, Zach. Oh, one more..." And her voice fades into the recesses of her living room.

Booth knocks. He waits twenty seconds and knocks again. Nothing. He sets the cardboard tray of coffee on the floor and digs out his cell. 

She lets it ring four times. He can hear it both in his ear and through her door, before she answers. "Brennan."

Booth rolls his eyes. "Bones. Let me in."

"Who is this?"

"I'm counting to ten."

"It's not locked, Booth."

Booth snaps his cell shut, counts to ten anyway, opens the door, retrieves their coffee, and kicks the door shut on his way in.

***

Gathering plates, napkins and two knives, when Temperance turns, she gets full frontal Booth blocking the kitchen doorway. She can pull a poker face, so she does, but her lungs need air. How can the man still look so federal in jeans and a tee? He's wearing a faded striped oxford over the tee, open and hanging out and it should look sloppy, but doesn't. His sneakers are red, which she just doesn't get. 

"They're red," he says.

"I see that." She takes a shallow breath, and walks straight at him. He gives way and follows her to the long table by the window where they set everything down.

She's got on her favorite green slacks and a light sweater. "Go ahead. I guess I need to change."

"We're going to Douglas Point," he says unhelpfully, as he rolls down the bagel bag and fishes for the cream cheese.

"Which is..."

"On the Potomac, south side. Site's back in the woods."

"Okay." She watches him sit and break a bagel. "You want to toast that?"

"No. Want me to toast yours while you change?"

She shakes her head and retreats. He makes her apartment seem smaller. And brighter.

"It'll be cooler there," he calls after her. "Grab a jacket."

***

Bones is still nursing her coffee twenty minutes later as Booth hits the beltway and lets the Tahoe stretch a little.

She closes the brief file he gave her when they left her place and finally looks over at him. Booth catches himself rolling his lower lip as he waits to see how pissed she is. "Although Zach thinks you've become our intermediary," she says, "I have worked other federal cases without you, Booth."

"I know."

"This isn't your case."

"No."

"So why are you here?" She seems to remember suddenly that they are in the Tahoe, and waves her hand at the dashboard. "Why am I here?"

"Deputy Director Cullen and Dr. Goodman felt you might need... back-up."

"Baby-sitting."

"Vacation, voo-doo, murder charges- ringing a bell?"

"That wasn't my fault."

Booth can't help it, he grins. Trouble follows after her like flame from a match and it never seems to be her fault.

"What are you smiling about?"

"Let's just... listen to some music, hmm?" He flicks on the radio and skims the tuner past the morning shows until he hits "Proud Mary" and stops. 

He opens and closes his fingers on the steering wheel and rolls his shoulders once. The rest of the truth is that it's been a hard few weeks. Booth's slotted cases in between Kenton's betrayal of the FBI, Bones' screw up in New Orleans, and taking time off to work Mandy Cullen's investigation. But Kent's case dropped him over the top, brought him too close to his past, and Cullen's making him field grounders until his 'bad mood' lifts. In Booth's opinion, Cullen hasn't met Booth's bad mood yet, but now's not the time to prove it. 

Foreigner is up. "Hot Blooded". Booth loves this song, it's been awhile since he's heard it last. Wishing he were headed for the beach instead of the woods, he taps the steering wheel and sings under his breath. After the first chorus, Bones reaches out and flicks it off.

Booth waits for her to speak, but she just looks at the windshield like it killed her first born. "What? Foreigner too low-brow for you?"

"Booth! You got blown up to that, how can you listen to it?"

"I did?"

"Yeah- guilty pleasures, air guitar, ka-boom all over my kitchen?"

"I thought I was getting drinks?"

"You don't remember."

"No."

"That's... understandable. I didn't realize, Booth. I'm sorry." 

Well. Shit. Booth leaves the radio off and sinks into the task of driving, focusing on the feel of the pavement, the red porsche to his left, the semi to his right. The driver in front of him, in a little blue Honda, is fond of riding the brakes. Probably two-footing it. He has just started to relax, thinking about his dream explosion, which never happened, and Parker's breathy voice in his ear, which has, when Bones decides to prod.

"Don't you hunt?"

"What?" Hearing himself, Booth wonders if he's ever met another woman who's made him sound so clueless. If so, he can't remember her.

"In New Orleans, you seemed surprised I hunt."

"Well, yeah. I'd think you'd get enough death in your daily life."

"Hunting isn't about death, Booth, it's about life. Our ancestors hunted without debate for, literally, thousands of years. As modern-day native tribes lose their ancestorial territories, they lose the ability to pass on their life-sustaining skills to their youngest members."

"Bones..."

"Hunting with traditional tools is a dying art." She sounds emphatic, like she's trying to prove something to him.

"Bones, I'm not arguing that with you."

"Do you hunt?"

"No."

Now she seems surprised, which makes him inordinately happy. "It's honorable, " she says. "Vital even, to our survival, to be able to hunt for food, clothing, shelter. It's important that those skills aren't lost."

"I'm not arguing that with you." Booth chuckles and shakes his head. 

"What?"

"Joe Versus The Volcano."

"I don't know what that means."

God, she can push his buttons. "It's a movie, Bones. You were probably too busy with your bow or slingshot or whatever to see it."

She leans back and gives him that look, the one that says he's a neanderthal who doesn't care enough about the real issues of the world. He thinks maybe he could teach her a little bit about the "real" world and the pleasures of escapism.

She crosses her arms. "Huh."

Booth knows enough to be wary, but he's also dying to know what she's thinking. "What?"

"I just thought- you're so alpha-male. You were a Ranger, a soldier, a trained..."

"Ah, ah, ah," Booth says sharply, holding up one finger in warning.

"... hunter," Bones says, frowning at him, though Booth is certain the word she wanted was 'killer', because now she knows that's exactly what he is, now matter what he tells himself. He can actually feel the earth pressed against his belly, the stock warm beneath his palms, the scope riding hard upon his cheek. 

"You seem the perfect type for crunching through the leaves to a deer stand."

"Implying I would hunt with a big gun. That hurts, Bones. A pistol is all I need."

"So you do hunt."

"Only when obligated."

"What does that mean?"

In answer, Booth tries the radio again. Bones subsides, looking out the window, and Booth stifles a deep sigh of relief. Hunting holds no appeal for him. Ticks and sunburn and blood on your hands. Under your fingernails. In your hair if something goes wrong. Do you save the blood for use or not? Skinning was always a treat, and who ever really does anything with the skins, or makes sausage from the intestines, or eats any organ besides the heart or liver? 

Booth hates liver, though he's not above eating it. And the heart, well, he can't think about that right now. He can already feel the slippery slide of it between his fingers, coated in oil, the woman saying, "Coma. Coma, Americano." It was tender and hot, burning his fingers, and so what if he didn't know exactly what kind of animal it came from? His stomach didn't exactly care.

Now- Sid's apple pie, that's food. A thick Porterhouse at Sam and Harry's. Smoked pork chops at Vaserely's. Rebecca's macaroni and cheese. Mother Mason's ham and potato cassarole. That bagel this morning? That wasn't food. Booth's stomach rumbles in agreement.

***

The staging area is half a mile or so from the site in rough country. From the file, Temperance knows they are in one of Maryland's last parcels of old growth forest, probably why Jack Stratton chose to bury some of his countless victims here. Undisturbed, little traffic. Huge old oaks and tall hickory, second story maples and dogwoods with thick, gnarled trunks, lots of brushy undergrowth. The rhododendrons are still blooming. Two porta-jons and six varieties of county, state and federal crime lab units. "We have to walk in," Booth says as he parks. "This area is state-owned, but the site's on private land with no access."

An agent Booth says he knows from around gives them a crude map and ID to hang around their necks, but then answers his phone and hustles off. 

Temperance is wearing her Doc Martens already. Booth trades his sneakers for a worn pair of hiking boots in the back of the Tahoe. He checks his .357 while he's at it, sheltered by the rear doors. He sees her watching him and smiles at her, with a half-shrug. She smiles back, even though she's still annoyed at him for assuming too much about how and why she hunts. She likes that he's thoughtful in his preparations, not willing to leave good enough alone. It is no different than gathering the proper tools in the lab prior to starting a new project.

They trudge up the rutted bike trail in the company of two silent techs hauling tackle boxes and numbered markers. If it weren't for the circumstances, it'd be a pretty walk. Breathing deep, relishing the movement after being cooped up in the car with moody, broody Booth, Tempe tastes the late spring air on her tongue. It's earthy and fragrant. There are vines with spicy, red blooms, and asters are growing in clumps all along their path; still, it feels wrong. The woods are hushed, the silence heavy, without birdsong, or the usual skittering of small prey in the brush. Temperance feels watched. 

About a quarter mile in, two ATVs come roaring down the trail towards them, their empty trailers bouncing along behind. The drivers, in yellow crime lab jumpsuits, pull to one side, tilted high sideways, shut off the engines and wait for the walkers to pass. They both look grimy and sport dark circles under their eyes. 

"How long you been here?" Booth says.

The taller one, slender and pale, a real lab rat as Angela would say, answers. "Nearly four days. We're not working nights, the site's too old to risk missing something, but we're all on security detail."

"How many?" Temperance asks.

"Eleven graves so far, sixteen whole or partial skulls. And a mass burial. They're still probing. You're Doc Brennan, right?"

"Yes."

"It's a real honor to meet you, ma'am."

"Thank you."

"We'll be headed back in a couple of hours. I hope you can tell us something new by then." He nods. "Guys," he adds by way of greeting the techs. 

They nod back and Lab Rat and his partner rev their ATVs into life and are off again. The trees swallow the sound in a remarkably short time, but around the next bend, two unhappy mockingbirds are squabbling with a trespassing squirrel, which chases the creepies from Tempe's neck.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Holding up a young sapling that gives against his weight, Booth is crusted in sweat, smeared with clay, tired, and just starting to think he might have to break down and go hunting for something more for dinner than the cold water he's drinking when Bones finally surfaces from anthropologist mode. She looks fresh, despite the streaks of red decorating her forehead and cheek. Her smile makes him feel better.

He sweeps his hand at her and then points at himself. "You were only consulting for transport. I was only along for the ride. These jeans are not the ones I would've chosen for playing in the mud."

"Agent Henson offered you a jumpsuit," she says smugly. Her own is vivid, and bright in contrast to the dull, molded, plant-colored scraps of fabric he's been seeing all day on the piles of bones being extricated from seventeen different graves and a pit.

He hands her his water bottle, half-full. She takes it, absently. "It was used," he says. And besides, short of being ordered into one, he's done with jumpsuits.

"They brought fresh ones hours ago." Turning away from him, she surveys the clearing. Booth guesses it's about sixty by eighty feet. Big enough for a graveyard, a little cramped for the operation they've got going on now. Bones drinks the water, all of it, and Booth grins. Score one for Seeley Booth.

They head for the gaunt Agent Henson, who's standing akimbo beside three body bags, hands on hips, smoke rising from a cigarette balanced precariously between his long fingers. He looks twenty pounds lighter than when Booth saw him last. Working serial killings is a sure way to weight loss. "Booth, Dr. Brennan. Thank you for your help, today."

"It certainly helped that the suspect told you where the bodies were buried," Bones says.

“Jailhouse informant, actually. Stratton only 'fessed up after we confronted him.”

Booth chuckles. "It was kinda ingenious to hide them in an abandoned graveyard."

"His cousin sold it to Mayport Rock. Said they played here as kids. How long do you think it'll be before you know for sure how many victims we have here?" Henson asks.

"They're all victims, Agent Henson. Every indication is that this is an early Native American burial ground, probably after the rise of Christianity within the tribe but before widespread European settlement. The cross contamination of the site makes it difficult to date in the field. No later than early ninteenth century. Possibly much earlier. I expect to find that most of them died from disease. There is some indication of violent death, but I need to determine cause and whether the bones were damaged ante or perimortum. Mr. Walters has several arrowheads in evidence, and a few irregular bullets. They'll need to finish sifting the grave dirt. The mapping is complete so far as your investigation is concerned. I am especially interested in any bits of unidentifiable debris, any fabric, and buttons. Dr. Caber is very good at what she does, she'll know what needs to get to me."

Henson lifts his foot. "I meant victims of Jack Stratton," he says, stubbing the cigarette out against the sole of his boot. 

"I am aware of what you meant, Agent, but it was imprecise and ignorant." 

Booth pats the air in a whoa, nellie, gesture, and Bones sighs. Henson looks bored. He pinches the stubbed butt and drops it in his jacket pocket while she gathers herself. Booth can actually see her thoughts roiling like white water as she considers what to share. 

"These three are a woman and two men, all early twenties, in various stages of decomposition which indicate they were killed some time during the last three to six months. With dentals and possible partial identifying marks such as scars, tattoos or genetic anomalies, we should have no trouble identifying them. Six of the graves contain a mix of old and new bone. We'll sort those first on high priority and determine if they are part of your case. The skull count indicates four more Stratton victims. I believe the pit is an old mass grave, there's a mix of both partially bundled and commingled remains, but nothing twentieth century. Probably. We'll sort those into individuals as best we can as time allows. You realize, don't you, that once word of this gets out, the Native American community will lobby under NAGAR for the remains to be returned to this site once they are repatriated to an appropriate tribe?" 

Booth admires her ability to segue without breath from science to ethics. Henson doesn't seem quite so sure he likes it, although Bones' tone was mild enough. He bristles. Booth takes a small step forward, placing his right foot in front of Brennan's left. She glances up at him, annoyed. It amuses him to think Henson might need protection from her, and he likes that, too.

Henson's answer comes as a surprise. "Dr. Brennan, my grandmother was full Cherokee, and I take a special interest in the rights of all Native Americans. Even so, know that getting these people re-interred on private land that already has federal approval for mineral mining is going to be an up-hill battle. If your lab confirms their age and authenticity, they will be passed out of my hands. Putting Jack Stratton away for his next several lifetimes is my only career goal at the moment." He looks down at the three bodies at his feet, sets his jaw, and then looks Bones straight on. "The only actual answer I need from you right now is how many more of those bones belong to identifiable people pertinent to my case." 

"I understand, Agent Henson. My team is dedicated and thorough. I would anticipate a preliminary answer for you within the week, with confirmation and re-structuring of individual skeletons within two."

"Let's just hope the skulls match the rest of the parts," Booth says.They both look at him like that hadn't occurred to them, too. "What?" He gestures at the bodies. "Just because he didn't dismember these doesn't mean a thing. He's done it before. He's been at this twenty years. The file says he's adaptive and impulsive."

“As you know, serial killers generally stick to one MO, Booth. Agent Henson, I’d be happy to review Stratton’s files for accuracy.”

Booth shakes his head at her audacity, but says, “You should take her up on that, Henson.” There’s a puzzle there and if anyone can spot it, Bones can.

Henson nods, looking pensive.

Bones sticks out her hand and Henson shakes it. 

"Remains'll be at your lab tomorrow. Thank you, Dr. Brennan." He nods. "Booth."

***

They are alone on the walk back to the staging area. 

"God, it's so quiet out here it's spooky. I feel... watched," Booth says after they have walked a while. He swivels his head, looking high into the trees on either side of the trail. The trees overhang the trail here and there, dappling every bit of it blindingly bright or dark. Temperance realizes how fast they are walking and slows her pace. Booth skews towards her, like a magnetic force, and matches her. She smiles at that, but he's still roaming, his gaze bouncing from the trees to the curve in the trail to the trees.

A minute later, his glance falls on her. "How old do you really think those skeletons are?" 

"I think Mayport Rock's not going to be too happy when a judge approves an archeological survey of their property." She thinks the bones are really old, beginning of the country old, but will never say so out loud without the proper testing. And there are anomalies.

"Really?"

"Yes. Booth, not all the older skeletons are Native American, and the ones that are have unusually bold markers." Which usually means older, undiluted bloodlines.

"So..." He is half-turned to her, frowning. Men melt out of the trees behind him. Tempe's face freezes and it seems to take forever before her next step lands on the ground. Booth's brows rise in question half a second before he spins and ducks, so that the raised black slapjack of his attacker slides off the hard, round dome of his skull in a glancing blow. 

Booth grabs the masked man's arm, his hand sliding from the guy's forearm, onto his bicep on the momentum of sweat and motion. They both grunt, shoving against one another. Pivoting to help him, Bones opens her mouth to yell. A salty palm covers it as a heavily muscled arm snakes around her and yanks her back against a hard chest. 

Kicking at the back of his attacker's knee, Booth fells the guy, but gets dragged down with him. A third man aims a kick at Booth's ribs and when he twists to avoid it, the first slams a fist into his temple. Booth rocks sideways. 

Her captor's breath is hot on Tempe's cheek. The hard edge of his mask digs into the flesh above her ear. He smells sharp. Peppermint and man sweat. She bites at his palm, but he just shifts his stance until he's folded around her and waits. 

The second man wallops Booth in the shoulder with his slapjack, and then whips it back across and down onto the crown of Booth's head. A third man, a fourth, move in, one carrying a crossbow like a rifle. Booth lays sprawled onto the narrow path, boneless and vulnerable.

The last man turns to her. Her captor eases his hand from her mouth. Temperance eyes the crossbow pointed at her while one of them rolls Booth over and takes his guns. "He's a federal agent. What do you want?"

The man holding the bow on her is stocky, with dark hair and light eyes. She risks an assessing glance and sees the others all answer to the same description, though when the one with Booth stands, he is taller than the rest. They are all wearing molded wooden masks that cover their noses and cheekbones, dark, mottled jumpsuits, and small backpacks fitted high and tight. The masks are painted in tribal-type swirls of dulled yellows and reds. Only the one crossbow. 

"There are agents at both ends of the trail. Someone will be coming any second." They wouldn't be taking Booth's guns if their intention was murder. "You can't just take us."

The tall one stows Booth's guns in his pack, nods at another and they lift Booth and hustle him off the trail. Just like that. Temperance sets her jaw. When she's released and motioned into action, she steps forward fast, bouncing into a forward kick and opens her mouth to scream, but she's yanked off her feet, the scream smothered in her throat by a dry rag and the hardest bicep she's ever felt crushing her throat. Shit. Scrabbling at the man's forearm, she bucks up, and starts kicking pedal-style with both legs, hitting her captor's shins. He's stone. She gets a foot braced and twists her body, rocking him, but he only picks her up off the ground by her throat, spreading his feet for balance. Her panic is boundless. She fights. She won't be trussed up and tossed into a dark hole ever again. 

Her captor squeezes until blackness encroaches. Her strength drains from her arms and her legs are swung up and secured by someone else. This can't be happening, not here. This is Maryland. It's a secured crime scene. And then she's jouncing into the woods after Booth, surprise seeping through her brain fog. It gets her thinking again. 

How can they possibly think to hide their passage through the forest? Trees pass inches from her nose, but nothing touches her except the rhododendrons, which are soft. The men are traveling at speed. She wants to hit or grab at the bushes, leave something for searchers to follow, but she's afraid to let go and try since she is still being held by her neck. She can't spit the rag. It's big and dry and her jaw is wedged tight. It hurts. She can't get enough air in through her nose, and feels on the verge of panic again as her lungs close. She stiffens her body, and is rewarded. The men have to sidestep to keep their balance. 

Tempe throws herself into it, drawing her knees up by inches and kicking out again and again. The men stop and her hope soars. They still have not said a word. Without discussion, her legs are dropped and the man on her throat shakes her. Stunned and unable to draw breath, she can't stop the tying of her wrists, and before she can blink, she's been tossed over a shoulder and they are off at a trot again.

Within minutes, they hit an overgrown service road of some sort and she's loaded in the rear seat of an SUV. She glimpses Booth crumpled in the back, before she's shoved over and blindfolded. She's working on rubbing the cloth out of mouth when rough hands grab her head and they gag her proper. Half the fight's knowing when to give, she reminds herself. She stops fighting and waits, concentrating on breathing. There's movement behind her as they shift Booth.

"Arm," someone says. Not enough to get any sense of the speaker. More rustling. The hatch slams shut. Sweaty men on either side of her. Doors shut all around. The engine starts, but just under it, she hears another as well.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

They switch cars twice in rapid succession. A long ride follows, long enough that Temperance gets over the slight motion sickness from being blindfolded. She has to think to breathe. Three to four hours, she guesses, before Booth starts to thrash. They pull over and the driver and front passenger climb out to check on him.

"No, no, he's fine."

"Top him off."

"No. It happens sometimes. Nightmares."

"Are you certain?"

Middle-aged men. not young, not old, no distinctive accent. No cigarette rasp or lisp or oddity to be remembered by. The hatch slams.

They are moving once more but don't go far before turning off to the right, then the left. Booth rolls over with a thump and groans, then kicks the back of her seat. He's breathing hard.

"Offer her water," the driver says as he turns off the engine. "Dr. Brennan. Do not speak just now or we may dump this agent right here."

She takes the cold bottle of water shoved into her hand, and as soon as her gag is loosened, she pries the cloth out of her mouth and lets it fall to the floor. She reaches for the blindfold, but a large, calloused hand is placed over hers in mute warning. Heeding it, she listens to the hatch open. 

"Hold his shoulders down."

"What are you doing?" she says, sharper than she intended. She sounds scared even to herself.

"Leaving him here, if you speak again. I'm cooling him, with water. Fan him."

Air wafts past her. She drinks her water. It tastes ridiculously sweet and pure. It doesn't feel as if the first swallow ever makes it down her throat, her dry tissues soak it up so fast. The water is gone too soon. The man to her right takes her bottle and hands her another. She sips it, wary of upsetting her stomach now that it's probably too late. It rolls and growls, but by the time the hatch closes again, she feels okay and Booth is quiet.

They leave the gag off, thank god for small favors, but drive on for hours.

*

She's not dumped into a hole. It's a lab, not state of the art, but large and airy. The windows are covered from the outside in a light material that lets a flickering light through. Tempe rubs her reddened wrists as the door locks behind her, leaving her alone. She crosses to the windows and tries all three, just in case. She pops the locks, jiggles the frames, pounds the glass. It's thick, like safety glass, and then someone pounds back, so she stops. 

There's the basics, three scopes of varying styles and strengths, two centrifuges, a blood analyzer. It's old, a brand she doesn't know. Next to it is a computer monitor and a tower. Two laptops. There's the standard useful chemicals and reagents, stains, slides, pipettes and beakers. A spectrometer. Everything one might need to measure, compare, contrast. A digital camera set up with its own dedicated table, lights, computer and printer dominates one corner. Tucked behind a heavy, old-fashioned screen sits a newer radiology unit. High power, tight calibration. A small, portable sits on the counter behind it, along with cassettes and several sealed boxes of film. 

Mystified, despite knowing she must be intended to ply her skills here, she wanders back into the lab proper. Across from her is a door, lined with rubber bumpers, which is not locked when she tries it. It's not actually lockable, but can be latched shut with a hook. It opens into a bathroom- toilet, shower stall, chemical bins for processing the x-rays, hence the bumpers. She makes use of the bathroom before walking through the next doorway, no door. A small bedroom. A cot, a fan, a chest of drawers that holds two tee shirts, several towels, soap, shampoo, razors. Everything a girl could want. There are two unwrapped granola bars in a ziploc bag and two bottles of water sitting next to the cot. 

Numb, Tempe sits on the cot. The light from outside is flickering in here, too, like firelight. Maybe torch light? Booth was still in the SUV when she got out, still unconcious, she thinks. If they needed her, why not just leave him on the trail? She's all too certain she'll find out in a few hours. And then it hits her. Because he'd find me. Anyone this organized didn't pick them up on a whim. They knew that he would pursue, relentless as a demon, and he would find her. With one of their own missing, the FBI would mobilize, but it'd take time. Goodman would agitate until they got moving. Angela would crack her whip of words. 

Yeah. 

But Booth would've found her already 

Not bothering to eat or take off her boots, she lies down and curls up, sleep claiming her hard.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

Booth is walking through the jungle. It's Boliva in July and he's soaked in sweat and his mouth is cotton-dry. There's a hard metallic rapping off somewhere, but he can't pinpoint which direction it's coming from. Someone's walking along behind him, Zach, he's pretty sure. He has to keep walking, because Parker is waiting for him. He can't be late, or the nuns will lock him out of school. Zach stumbles back there, but there's no time, so Booth turns around, continuing to walk, walking backwards, but Zach's fallen off the trial somewhere. Booth should go back for him, but he can't stop walking, and now he can't turn around. 

There's a speck up the road, it must be Zach, but it's moving pretty fast, and soon enough, he sees it's Bones, looking cool and comfortable. She's got on cute little black shorts and a tie-dye tee with Jerry Garcia emblazoned on, and Booth laughs, 'cause Bones and the Grateful Dead? That's funny. He's walking backwards and starts to say hi, but then she's jogged right on by, not a hair outta place, like she doesn't even know him. The road stops moving by and he's standing still, in the middle of her lab. The rapping fills him, and she's there, pressing against his back. Her lips tickle his ear. "Seeley."

Booth explodes into waking, on his feet and crouched before his blood catches up and drops him on his ass just as fast. His feet are bare. The cell, he knows instantly that's what it is, is a small cave of rock, only twice as wide as he is and maybe six feet deep. He doesn't think he could lie flat, though his body is telling him to try it, because sitting up is just... not a good thing. Instead, he takes deep breaths in through his mouth and releases them slow through his nose. He's wearing only his jeans and blue tee, which had been layered under an oxford and his lined windbreaker. His heart rate drops and his stomach calms. 

No gun, of course. No wallet or badge. No watch. Parker's picture and his lucky chip are gone from his pocket. He looks up. The ceiling is more than twelve feet up, maybe fifteen, with two or three foot high wall-to-wall bars front and back. There's plenty of air and natural light dropping in on him, but no way for him to get a handhold high enough to pull himself up and look out. 

The irregular bang and whap of metal hitting metal is coming from above him, something striking the bars above. He can see the shadows swing as they strike. It's loud. His temples pound with every crash. There's no door in front of him, so he inches up to standing, making sure his head stays on, and turns himself around the opposite way. Wooden door, solid, a look-at-me set dead center. He strikes the small panel, but it doesn't shift. He can see the bottom's set into a groove in the door and that without a handle on this side, there's no way he can pry it up. He's sure it's locked on the other side, anyway. The door is set in a rusted metal frame, flush to the wall. He can't decide how it opens.

To the left of the door, a built-in shelf holds two fat waterskins. He's seen waterskins, even used them, but what the fuck? They are cool to the touch and feel moist even on the outside. He lays one on the back of his neck, closing his eyes. The last thing he remembers is nodding at Henson and starting down the rutted trail to the staging area. The sun was glinting through the trees, dusk coming on, and Bones pulled her ponytail out while they were walking, shaking her head so her hair fell in waves around her face and over her shoulders. After a few moments, he shifts the waterskin to his forehead and then onto his tender cheek, which is starting to throb. He pulls it off and probes the bone, running his fingers up and around the swelling rim of his eye-socket. His eye's not swelling shut, that's good. 

He pops the plug on the waterskin and pours a bit of liquid out. It's clear, and doesn't affect the stone floor- and it is stone he sees, turning to let his eyes follow the uneven lines of floor and wall. There's a narrow dirt strip along the back wall, which is more irregular than the others, as if the cell were carved from a natural cave. Pouring more liquid into his palm, he sniffs it, and then tastes it. Water. Booth takes a sip, swishes it around his dry mouth and spits it back out. He's thirsty, but doesn't dare drink until he absolutely has to, or something changes his mind. 

He takes two short strides, to the dirt strip, which proves deep. It's more of a trench. This one detail sets this place far apart from the worst in which he's ever awoken. The stone wall peeks through the dirt here and there right to the bottom. No digging under. He relieves himself and then eases down, back to the wall, facing the door, so he can contemplate his circumstance until something happens to give him more information.

***

Eating her second granola bar, she's sitting on the counter next to the glass beakers, swinging her feet, when the main door opens. The first man that enters is Crossbow Guy. Three more men file past him, carrying the large, clear evidence tubs used to hold the bones from the site the day before. She knows they are one and the same because both her signature and Dr. Caber's are scrawled across them in red ink, along with "Mayport Rock, Douglas Point" and the date.

The men move in and out of the doorway until all the boxes and bags are lined up on the floor. They appear to be the same men who took her, and are all wearing the masks. When they are done and leave, a sandy-haired man with dark eyes, wide shoulders and a slight pot-belly enters and claps Crossbow Guy on the shoulder. Crossbow Guy backs out and locks them in. 

Before he can speak, Temperance does. "Are the masks a hint?" She lifts her chin towards the remains. "You think they're yours?"

"I know they are, Dr. Brennan." His voice is cultured and mellow. She hasn't heard it before this moment, so he probably wasn't along on the drive in.

She jumps off the counter and crosses her arms. "Then why am I here?"

"Because Jack Stratton has an agenda. We do not wish to be a part of it."

"And what..."

"You do not need to know," he says forcefully. "All you need to know is that Agent Booth is expendable. We do not wish to harm him, but we will if we must. If you cooperate, you will both be returned to Washington and none the worse for wear."

"It doesn't matter how well hidden you think you are, there are federal agents already on their way here." 

He smiles. His lips are thin, but his teeth large and even. "An admirable boast, Dr. Brennan, but we have much experience in hiding ourselves. Mr. Oak and Ms. Pine will join you shortly as assistants. You may call me Mr. Beech. We would like the work of Jack Stratton separated from those whom are ours. Speed would be beneficial to Agent Booth's condition." 

"How do I know he's not already dead, that you won't kill me when I'm done identifying?"

Mr. Beech turns his back to her, and for a very long second, Tempe considers taking him down. There'd be no advantage though, not with the door locked and Booth to use in negotiation for release. She follows him instead, and waits while he boots up the computers. He chooses one of the laptops, connects to a wireless router, and clicks on Camera B. "The other cameras are disabled, so this is your only outside view, though you are welcome to waste time trying to circumvent our system." 

The dark screen resolves to reveal a narrow white-walled cell in a black-and-white setting. Booth sits with his back against the wall. His head is back and his eyes closed, but his knees are up, his feet flat on the floor. His forearms rest across his knees and he's clenching and unclenching his right fist, flexing his fingers. Shadows cross his face, as if whatever lights his cell is swinging. 

"I wouldn't advise it, though," Mr. Beech adds.

Tempe has to swallow to keep her granola down.

***

"Booth. Agent Booth" 

Booth opens his eyes, with just a moment of disorientation. Despite the metal clanging and the rock behind his back, he slept. It makes him wonder how hard he got hit. His head hurts. Night has fallen and the cell is flickering with what can only be torch-light from above, through the bars. A wooden paddle is balanced in the open look-at-me, holding a wooden bowl, a spoon, and a healthy chunk of fresh bread torn from a small loaf. Booth's mouth waters at the rich scent rising from it. He grits his teeth in defense against the grinding of his stomach and remains seated. 

"Booth. Take this." A young male voice, nothing distinctive about it, likely to change in time.

They are smart, whoever "they" are, the whole set-up is slick, guaranteed to keep him from gleaning much about his whereabouts or his captors. The banging metal keeps him from hearing the sounds of the encampment, he can't see from his cell, the trench means not having to move him, but also indicates a lack of brutality. They aren't trying to humiliate or break him. They've provided water, and, it seems, are willing to feed him well. They are not taking chances, or underestimating his desire to escape and his ability to do so. The paddle proves it. If he could grab a body part for leverage, he'd take the food.

"Agent Booth, you may be with us some time, yet. Take this. Do you need aspirin?"

He needs a person, he needs the door opened. "I need a doctor." 

"You've already been seen by one; you've suffered no lasting damage."

"I have a condition. An old... " Booth closes his eyes, trying to let some med term roll out without thinking. "...closed head injury. I don't have my meds."

"Agent Booth, you have thirty seconds to take your meal. Do you need more water?"

Booth counts out the thirty in his head, determined not to ask after Bones. That will only give them something to use against him. The disappearance of a pretty good federal agent and a world-renowed, semi-celebrity, forensic anthropologist from the site of mass murder will have the Bureau and every other agency with free hands out in full force hunting mode. All he needs to do is stay alive until he's found. He hopes Temperance is keeping her mouth shut.

***

"Femur. Probably male. Adult." Tempe holds the bone up, already focused on the next, and Ms. Pine takes it. 

"Femur. Unknown. Young. Probably teen." Holds it up, Mr. Oak takes it.

Tempe's eyes are tired. She's tired. She stares at the next epiphisyal cap without seeing it. The bones are fragile partials, desiccated and porous. Nine of the skeletons were wrapped well enough when buried to keep the larger bones somewhat together. Even though their fabric and animal skin shrouds rotted long ago, letting most of the smaller bones fall away and erode, leaving no metatarsals or carpals to speak of, there are a few vertebra, various parts of the long bones, partial skulls, bits of ribs- though most of the ends, the part useful for aging, are gone. The pelvis bones are in at least as good a shape as the long bones and although there is erosion and pitting along the illium edges and some are less complete than others, she can take educated guesses as to the age and sex of those. These bones, though, the ones that were dropped from their shrouds or never wrapped to begin with, shifted and compressed as time molded the burial pit... 

"Dr. Brennan?"

"Yes." She shakes herself. Focus. There's three more tubs containing related remains, and then five more bags of totally commingled bones to go, before she'll really feel she's got a handle on sorting through the skeletons in the pit. Start with the biggest tangle first, and the rest will seem easier. Her mother taught her that in regards to the combing of her hair, but it's been the solid sort of common sense she's fallen back on time and again. "Here. . . this is the other femur for the adult, definitely male."

It's no good. She needs to sleep for a while. She tweezes red blanket fibers from the femur, leaving some attached, and places them in a culture dish, since she has no small bags. She labels it with the tag number from the current tub. "I need a break. Can we start again tomorrow?"

"Of course," Mr. Oak reassures her. 

After they have gone, Tempe showers and pulls on a clean tee-shirt. She debates putting her boots back on, but ends up in her socks, with her boots pulled open and unlaced by the cot for easy access. She pads back into the lab and pulls up Booth's camera. He's up, moving, but then leans against the wall. He is close to the camera. Although the light is flickering there as it is here, she can see his face is bruised and one cheek swollen. She's seen enough of that on Booth for a lifetime. She wants to think he's somewhere close. 

Frustrated, she goes to the windows. There is not the smallest crack to see through, though now that she's watching, she can detect the shadows of her sentries. She hits the glass, and one of them moves to stand directly in front of her. 

Awake now, she settles in with a bag of the commingled bones, sorting them into whatever piles she can read from fissures and notches and protuberances, from staining and cracks and texture. Humerus. Mandible. Clavicle. Man. Woman. Younger. Older. Old. These are all old bone. There's no way, in any lab, to differentiate every vertebra, every rib, with any certainty to any specific individual. 

She separates the debris, notes particulates, collects anything that may link one bone to another, although Mr. Beech assured her earlier that wasn't necessary. She need only survey the group, give them genders and ages, if possible, for the related bones. Tell them how many people were laid to rest all total. Ms. Pine was photographing every piece on a biometric board. Mr. Oak handled the radiographs. It would all be documented, he assured her, but not for her. Her job was to find any remains that did not belong. 

When the torches are extinguished, she looks to Booth. The screen is green. He's been sitting, with his hands over his ears, or arms over his head, but rises now, turning his head, looking. He finds the camera, staring up into it for a long moment. He reaches for something, it's bulky, but soft, draping over his hand. He hurtles it directly at her and Temperance shies back from the screen. It takes him five tries. When he succeeds, the screen fritzs grey and then plunges to black. 

She turns off the monitor and goes back to work.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

In the dark, long after the torches have been extinguished, Booth paces the cell to keep warm. Two strides, turn, one stride, turn, two strides, turn... He does push ups against the wall, and jumping jacks in the middle. Rests under the clatter of the metal until he's chilled again, and returns to pacing. 

Mid-morning, when it's obvious no one is coming, he tries the water. He grins, grateful that the waterskins were useful. The tiny, dangling camera, not visible until its red light betrayed it, is gone. Hauled out from up top sometime in the dark. He waits a while, watches the shadows as they glide down the wall, and then, since he still feels okay, drinks deeply. 

The torches have been lit once more before he's again offered food. Silently, he accepts. It's stew, a rich brown broth with carrots and onions and potatoes. He finds three large chunks of tender meat- venison, he thinks. The bread is fresh and still warm. He is hungry enough that simply eating eases the anxiety the constant, crashing, metal bells have created in him. 

When the boy returns for his bowl, Booth can think of no use for it. It's wider than the trench, so not useful for digging. He gives it up. The spoon he has to give up in exchange for two fresh waterskins. Draw. But he then receives a small canvas bag, shoved through the look-at-me, which he finds is full of dirt, for use in his latrine. And a wool blanket. Holding it as the look-at-me closes, Booth wonders just where the FBI is and why it's taking them so long.

***

“Venison goulash,” Mr. Beech says, indicating the steaming bowl in front of her as he pours wine into two plain, wooden tumblers. 

It’s Cambria, a merlot; one she keeps at home. But she’s appalled that she’d be offered wine while she’s being held hostage. “Isn’t that against the rules? I’m your… captive.” 

He laughs. “There are no rules. And we have no intention of cruelty, but those people are ours and we won’t have them held 'captive' of the government for a decade while scientists take measure of what’s left of them.”

He has a point. There are Native American remains in the Jeffersonian that have been stored in drawers for forty years and more, though repatriation has made a large dent in the inventories of museums and universities nationwide.

When she doesn’t answer right away, he goes on. “Look at the African American cemetery exhumations in New York. It took twelve years to see those people returned to peace.”

“You’ve kidnapped a federal agent.”

“Dr. Brennan, I’ve given you our motivation, which is more than strictly necessary conversation with you. We can talk about your preliminary thoughts over our meal.”

Temperance can feel sharp words rising in her throat before they have even fully formed in her brain. She bites her tongue to keep from lashing out at him. He’s looking at her the same way Booth sometimes does, when he’s gauging her reaction to something he’s laid out for her to traipse through, waiting to see how she negotiates the mental terrain. Since she often does her thinking out loud, it’s hard to hit the brakes now, when she just wants to stalk away and let them lock her in with her work so she can finish.

Anything she can find out will be useful to the FBI in their investigation, if she lives to tell them about it. She needs to see the grounds, be able to describe the place she's being kept. "I want to see Agent Booth."

"No. Bread?"

"I won't tell you my findings until I see him." 

"I believe the phrase you're wanting is 'proof of life'. And no, not only will you not see Agent Booth now, if you don't report your findings as we ask, you will never see him again."

The threat is delivered so casually, as easy as 'pass the butter, please', that Temperance repeats it to herself, dissecting the words from the tone, analyzing the meaning. She decides he's serious. Looking at his square jaw, the intricate mask he wears, the lab in which she's trapped, she decides he's also quite capable of following through on his promise. He scares her, but she thinks it’d be very bad to let him see that. She picks up her wine and sips it. Although her heart is beating too hard, her hand is steady. 

***

The third day Booth spends waging war. The rattle and bam above him becomes enemy fire, the irregular blast of some old, rusty Gatling. He takes three different guns apart- his revolver, his nine-millimeter, his rifle- and cleans, oils and reassembles them eighty-nine times before he loses count. At some point he adds a grenade launcher and a bazooka to his game. With them, he could take out the noise-maker up top. His balls tighten with its every jarring crash. Deep in the night, he counts the days and discovers he's missing his weekend with Parker. He'd give a year of weekends to know that Bones is safe. That knowledge makes his chest ache. Deep, deliberate breaths ease the constriction, but his heart still hurts.

***

"Okay. There are definitely sixteen right femurs and three probable right femurs. There are also four partial femurs that can be matched visually and by density to four partial right radiuses. My best guess is twenty-three individuals in the common pit. Are we in agreement?" 

It is two am, and Ms. Pine and Mr.Oak look peaked. They both nod. They have spent most of the last fourteen hours inventorying the bones piece by piece, numbering and labeling. There are now fifteen individual tubs and five more that hold Jack Stratton's probable remaining eight victims. The tubs are new, deep, non-descript, blue Rubbermade. Temperance has been overseeing their work while starting in on the skeletons exhumed from single graves. 

"There are no bones in the pit that stand out as significantly younger than the others." 

***

Morning again, and it brings a reprieve from the never-ending noise as the breeze drops and the air becomes stagnant and still. There is nothing to hear, Booth thinks. Even the silence sounds muted. His cell darkens early, after the sun has switched sides and begun the climb up the east wall. 

A blustery wind rises throughout the late afternoon, and the metal bells crash louder, harder, hit ever more discordantly. He rolls the blanket over his neck and wraps the ends around his hands. He covers his ears, pressing hard. The storm breaks, fierce, thunder adds a bass vibration and rumble beneath the ringing, metal clang. Lightning flares off the walls of his cell. Although he scrunches his eyes closed tight, the flashes blind him with brightness. He can smell the sea. 

He stands. Cold rain, blown through the bars above in waves, hammers him. He breathes in the deep, subtle, scent of salt. Dropping the blanket, he scrubs his face and runs his fingers through his spray dampened hair. Definitely near the ocean. Finally, something to think about besides what may be happening to Bones. A clue.

The storm exhausts him; at some point his repetitious Hail Mary morphs and he ends up singing protestant Parker's latest obsession, "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore", under his breath over and over to distract himself from the noise. 

***

Temperance leans back and stretches. Two more grave remains to go. Eight contemporary sets of bones are set aside. Possible victims of Jack Stratton, buried among Europeans and Native Americans, a confusing mix already. Booth was right. Not all the parts add up, Stratton has mixed the bones like pick-up sticks. Bomb bursts of lightning are brightning the lab now and then, but the latest advance in the storm is receding. The rain is heavier. She can still hear an odd banging of metal on metal from somewhere distant, something the wind has torn loose, no doubt. 

Ms. Pine sets the next crime lab tub at the head of the table between them and opens the top. The only odor is dry earth. Another double burial, evident immediately by the presence of two nearly complete skulls. Without speaking, they begin to sort the bones. They are still clumped together in clods of red earth and scraps of their shrouds, although most of the grave debris was bagged separately and Temperance has seen none of those evidence bags here. 

"Will Mr. Oak be back to radiograph these or shall I?" she asks Ms. Pine.

"If you don't need them in particular for your survey, he can finish in the morning." She sounds slightly breathless and when Tempe glances at her, she sees a faint flush to her face, seeping onto her lower cheeks from under her mask. Her lips are slightly parted.

"That's fine," Temperance says, but it's not really, none of this is fine. Booth is waiting on her. But she doesn't need the biometric board for this pair, she knows already she is looking at a woman and a girl, maybe mother and daughter, though that will never be known now. At the Jeffersonian, she could tease that information from these bits of bone, but not here. She blows her breath out hard. "Are you okay?"

The girl nods. Tempe can't stop thinking of her as such. Like Zach, she's probably older than she looks, but appears no more than twenty by any standard.

They are standing between two long black-topped wooden tables, and Tempe starts building the skeletons. Ms. Pine continues to sort, carefully noting and photographing the placement of each bone against the others before removing them from their positions, and brushing any loose dirt away before placing them in a line for Tempe's consideration. Old bones again, all the smaller bones returned to earth. Jack Stratton has not disturbed this pair. 

"Oh," Ms. Pine breathes. She removes a small pelvis, with both hands. It is nearly intact, only the pubis is gone altogether. Her fingers trial across the left illium, tracing the long ago hip of a child not more than eight years old. 

From the corner of her eye, Tempe watches her brush each remaining piece of the small skeleton clean. The only words that come to Tempe's mind to describe the curve of her body, the soft rush of her breath, the care she takes, are: reverance, veneration, pious. Ms. Pine treats the bones as sacraments.

When they are done, there's not much to see. "Female, twenty-five to thirty-two, European. Female, six to eight, European."

Ms. Pine hovers over the child. 

"Am I missing something?" Temperance says.

Ms. Pine looks at her. A bright shine glazes her light blue eyes. She is striking, a dark brunette, her hair is heavy and straight. Her mask is done in red and ochre yellow. Temperance wonders if she painted it herself.

"Tell me what I'm doing here. Please."

Taking a deep breath, Ms. Pine glances at the door, then back to the child.

"Please," Tempe whispers.

Ms. Pine lifts her hand, which is trembling and strokes the child's skull. "Virginia Dare," she says.

*** 

He wakes, still rain-damp and jangled, to the sound of the look-at-me sliding up. It's morning, cold and fresh. The metal sounds like evil wind chimes, but at least they aren't as loud. The paddle holds breakfast. He stands and peers into the steaming bowl. A porridge. Pats of butter are melting on top. But this is a break in the pattern. He's not been offered more than one meal a day, always under torchlight. 

"I know you're wet, Agent Booth. You'll dry soon enough, but a hot meal never goes amiss, when one's uncomfortable."

He speaks... oddly; and not just because Booth is half-deaf. Old-fashioned, or maybe he's just a lot older than Booth assumed at first, or is speaking from a script.

There have been no unnecessary words between them and Booth decides not to start now. He raises his arms over his head, stretches, leaning side to side- and moves in fast. Grabbing the end of the paddle, he shoves it back through the look-at-me as hard as he can. Hot whatever spills over his hand, the bowl clattering to the floor. The man-boy grunts and hits the wall with a solid thud. Ah. Narrow corridor. Booth can feel a savage smile stretching the corners of his dry lips. He feels feral, powerful with pent-up fury. He reverses, dragging the paddle back towards himself. It catches on the door. There's a wide crossbar of a handle that keeps it from sliding through the look-at-me. 

"Fuck!" Booth shouts. He shoves again, and lets go, sending the paddle sailing into the rising man-boy who evidently ends up on the ground again. The look-at-me drops closed. Booth pounds both fists on the door, which doesn't even tremble. His mostly-healed collarbone is achy with the cold and damp and protests his abuse with a fierce twinge. The guttural noise that bursts from him hurts his throat. The click of the bolt sliding home comes too fast, and he knows now there is more than one guard. It's a start.

"I'm sorry, Agent Booth, that you have chosen the hard way," the man-boy gasps, from the other side. He really does sound regretful. He clears his throat and his voice comes louder. "Try not to fight it too hard, it's for your safety." 

"What?" Booth says, startled. He hits the door again, with the flat of his hands this time. It booms in the small space. "What?"

But there is no response. 

The metal clangs above.

Booth paces until his clothes are dry. Shadows move up the wall with the sun. He sips his water to quiet his belly.

He feels it coming, spins and lashes out. A long metal pole, protruding through the bars on top, swings from his backhand, hits the wall and rebounds. It's yanked up and jabbed at him. He ducks. A second pole drops in from the other side, hitting him upside the ribs hard enough to send him into the wall. 

This space is too close for fighting. He dodges it as it comes back at him, but the first pole catches him from behind, sweeping at the back of his knees, and he's airborne for a long sickening second before he smashes into the stone, flat on his back. The second pole is jerked up and driven at his belly. He grabs it, too late, as the first strikes his shoulder, end on. It burns. 

He roars, and gains his feet, but he's burning, burning, burning into darkness.

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

He's sitting on his front steps, in front of the old place in Philly, and Randy Howell hands him a bottled Coke. One of the good ones out of the ancient chest cooler in the back of Gayle's store. 

Booth pops the top on the edge of the brick step. He flakes the glass, but just runs his thumb along the edge and drinks anyway. It makes him thirstier.

"Wow." Randy says, "It's so quiet you can hear it fizz."

Booth cocks his head and listens to the silence. He looks down. Empty Coke bottles are sitting all along the walk, on the grass, on the pavement of the street. There are no houses, just a endless field of Coke bottles, set shoulder to shoulder. He sees a red wind coming. It swirls and dips. "Hey, Randy," he says, but Randy's not there.

The bottles moan with the wind. Booth feels hollow inside. He gets up and walks out and soon enough is walking on top of the bottles, but it doesn't worry him. He's a bit annoyed that the open mouths stick to the bottoms of his bare feet. They get stickier and stickier. He decides to break the bottles and draws his gun, but gets only a dry click when he pulls the trigger. He looks at the gun in his hand. It's not his, it's Parker's. No bullets, of course. He sighs and pulls a clip from his cammy pocket. He loads and points. Nothing. He checks, no bullets. Re-loads. Nothing. Re-loads. Nothing. Re-loads, lifts the gun and fires- point blank at a dark-haired girl, deep-olive skin, exotic eyes so black he sees himself.

"Booth," she says. The bullet drills a black hole into her forehead. Smoke wisps out, and then her face explodes. He recoils from the blood mist, the dense rain of her flesh, screwing his eyes shut. Her blood is hot when it strikes him

* 

Booth jerks awake. She was twelve years old and she almost took him down, a seasoned Ranger more than twice her age. He's on his side, in the woods. He's bare-chested and cold. He pries himself up; finds his clothes have cradled his head. His boots and socks are next to them. His stomach doesn't like whatever drug they used. Crawling a few feet away, he retches, but he's dry. He pulls on his shirt and jacket- his shoulder holster's on the ground underneath; finds his wallet, watch, badge, and .357 in his boots when he tries to put them on. His gun's loaded- he checks before putting his boots on and again after he's standing. 

He leans on a pine until the dizziness passes. 

Scrutinizing his surroundings, he tries to decide his next move. His watch says three, but it's neither three in the morning nor three in the afternoon. It feels early. He's in a copse, little underbrush, but lots of pine, maple, dogwood. An oak, a couple of straight trunked trees that he wants to call hickory. Sloping ground. He kicks at the pine needles and scuffs at the ground with his toe. Dark, rocky soil. Not the beach. And then he sees her boots. Inside is a compass, a dark line is drawn in pen across the western symbol. 

Booth turns himself about until he's certain of north. He strikes off west. He's been walking about fifteen minutes, threading his way through unmarked forest, remembering not to step on anything he can step over; never stepping over something he can step around, when he hits a deer trail. It meanders westerly and uphill for a while, so he uses it, but then it bobbles off to the south. He hesitates, reluctant to leave a trail of any sort. The underbrush is thicker here, but as he looks, he sees one of the small rhododendrons at the turn has three evenly broken branches, one right below the other. When he checks, the bush sits due west.

It is not the smart thing to do. Deer trails lead to water and water leads to people. People mean help, and the whole Bureau backing him, searching for her, if he can just get them looking in the right spot. Booth listens, but can hear no creek, or water of any kind, no road noise, no motors. He wastes eight seconds wishing for the beat of a copter. If those sounds are out there to be heard, "they" have done a good job of making sure he won't hear them. He covers one ear, and then the other, listening to the small movements in the woods, the birds, trying to decide how muted they sound. 

He knows all he needs to do is walk straight and he'll find a road or river or fence line to follow. He doesn't even need the compass to walk in a straight line. Well, mostly straight line, even in the dark, no matter the terrain. He's not sure he's in Maryland anymore, but he knows East Coast woods when he sees them. There's plenty of civilization here, he just needs to find it. He looks down at the boots tied to his belt loop. What is Bones doing right now? Is she trying to hike out barefoot? Yeah. He can see that. She'd scrape some bark off a tree or snare a rabbit with a daisy chain and make herself some shoes. He smiles. Okay, looking for Temperance Brennan, now, not looking for help.

About ten feet in, another rhododendron also has three stacked branches broken at about six inches from the tips. Still attempting to hold west, he's careful to scan the brush and in a few minutes finds the same arrangement on a holly bush. Definitely purposeful. Another twenty yards or so and he sees it again.

Sixty yards later, he halts. He's lost the trail, although he's still headed west. It may not be related, but he can't believe it's not. "Bones!" he yells. A bush erupts near him; the whir of wings as three birds bolt. "Bones!"

He backtracks, rips off his jacket and tosses it lining side up over the last bush. The lining's khaki, but should be light enough for him to find again. Casting himself into the brush in ever-widening circles, Booth re-sets his line-of-sight every fifteen steps so he doesn't waste time. When he finds the next sign, it's three fresh slashes in a dogwood trunk to his right. He ties his shirt to a branch above his head, and heads back to his left, cutting straight across his circular search pattern, looking for his jacket. 

When he finally spots it, he turns, trying to see his shirt. He can, thank god. He lines the two signs up, takes his reading, retrieves his clothes and hunts on, now going northwest. He finds two more markers before he knows dusk is falling, that if he is wrong, he has wasted the afternoon and lost her, if not himself. 

*

The first stream crossing is shallow. Booth is happy to get to the other side with the wet confined to below his knee. He doesn't drink, though his mouth tastes like dirt from the pebble he'd used to relieve his drymouth. Eventually, he'll have to risk it or take time to fashion a filter of sorts. Dehydration's worse than the runs if it looks like he's going to be goddamned lost for very long. His kinks have kinks from sleeping in a shallow nest he'd scraped out between the exposed roots of a huge oak after nightfall. It's just past dawn, and fog shrouds the dips and hollows along the the stream, wreaths the trees twenty and thirty feet upslope. It falls away like cobwebs as he climbs upslope.

Three white-tail deer freeze in place as he crests the large, rocky ridgeline at mid-morning. Watching them watch him, Booth stops, panting, and lets his calf muscles rest. At some unknown signal, they bound off as one. He hits the next downslope. The trees are thinner and larger here, and the land opens up, dropping away into a long scoop of valley. He marks the place he's standing. 

Instead of heading straight down, west, to the next stream below, he sidetracks along the ridge, scanning the valley and adjacent slopes for roads, cabins, glass, power lines, anything, but there is nothing manmade, and since it is overcast, not even the contrails of jet planes to say there is anyone here but him. He knows there's trails. He knows there's access roads into this wilderness, he just needs the right angle of view to find one.

His view right now includes a massive black thundercloud rolling in from the southwest. The temperature is falling, and the stream below is larger than the first, a small river. All he can hear is the rising wind stirring the trees at his back and the dull rush of white water. Bad idea to cross before the storm, with no way to warm himself after. If he waits until after it passes, it may be hours before he can cross safely. He licks his chapped lips, eyes on the water.

The wind shifts, gusting in swirling eddies. Booth smells smoke. He turns, questing, looking, but it's gone with the gust. He waits, chest tight, for the wind. There it is, blowing into his face from the direction of the thundercloud. Ten to twelve miles per hour. He re-traces his steps along the ridge, to about the place he emerged from the woods. It's coming from across the river. Booth backs into the tree line and hunkers down. 

He can't see the smoke, it's not black or thick or big, so it must be small enough that the wind is hiding it. He waits with soft eyes, not trying to look anywhere in particular, just waiting. Movement beyond a small copse, thick with undergrowth. He focuses there, allows his muscles to relax as his training kicks in. The physical drops away from him, his exhaustion, his thirst, the discomfort of the blisters he's raised walking in wet boots, the roll of the pine needles below his fingertips as he steadies himself. The wind and the whitewater fade away. 

He tracks the shadow in shadow as it glides across leaves a hundred different hues of green, into the clearer space of the tree line, a person, walking between the black trunks. Four thirty. Four twenty. Four hundred yards. When she steps out onto the bank, the relief is an adrenaline rush. Booth quivers. She's whole. She's here. She glances up, directly at him, it seems, then looks along the woods, searching. The river's carved itself a small pool, surrounded by larger rocks. Pants rolled to her knees, Bones wades out into it and immerses whatever she holds in her hands. 

Booth splits his attention between her and the path she took, but nothing else moves there. Better to be sure. Inch by inch, he settles into a better position to watch.

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

There's a storm coming. Temperance hopes Booth makes it to her before it breaks. She drags another cedar bough onto the wooden frame she built from deadfall and pushes it into place. It needs another layer. She begins gathering pine needles and dead leaves and stacking them on. Maybe they lied to her and Booth isn't coming at all. She looks at her bare feet, wondering again how far she could get. She's already tried lashing pine together with vine, but that didn't work. Her pocketknife is sheathed on her right boot. Why couldn't they have left her that instead of Booth's twenty-two? It would have been infinitely more useful. 

She won't spend a fourth night here. The first was miserable, since she woke too late and too groggy in the day to do anything to help herself. Last night was better, though she started at every little noise, thinking Booth would be there every second. In the morning she's heading out along the river, regardless, until she finds a spot big enough for a signal fire. Tacking back and forth between the grove of cedars and her little camp, she adds another layer of boughs on the sides of her makeshift pup tent. She got lucky and managed to set it above a dip in the ground, so there's room to sit inside, and the entrance is pretty wide. And on the bedding pine she laid down, she was pretty comfortable, but the coming rain worries her. Hopefully the wind direction won't change too much when it hits. 

The fish trap is empty, when she checks again before setting off upstream to hunt dry wood for her fire. She's seen both deer and rabbit yesterday and today, but is afraid to waste bullets. She's seen no lights at night, which just seems amazing. Where on the east coast can you be and not see lights? This is what it looked like when Virginia Dare was born. Well, not really. Old growth forests were the rule, not the exception, and there were plenty of trees then that hardly exist now, like Dutch Elm and Chestnuts. The Indians lived off chestnuts, they were so plentiful. She'd love a handful of chestnuts to cook with the fish. Or berries, but it's too early in the season. Still, it's as dark as it was then- she needs a pretty good supply of wood to get her through the night.

Back at camp, she stacks most of the kindling she's found into the lean-to, covers it with a fat pine bough in an extra attempt to keep it dry, and takes the rest to her piddling fire. She feeds it twigs until it's happy again and then pokes in a couple of larger chunks of limb. Although she's in a copse of old pines, young hardwoods, and a thick surround of undergrowth, fat-leaved rhododendron sticking out here and there from the scraggly thicket, the wind is pushing through with breezy stabs that swirl smoke into her face. She looks up at the dark sky. Her fire won't last long.

She feels the step before she hears it; all the hairs on the back of her neck rise. A long pause. Booth's twenty-two is tucked into her belt. She drops a twig into the fire and lets her hand cross to the butt, listening for the next step. Thunder grumbles across the valley. She doesn't hear the step, but every nerve tells her the enemy is closer. The wind is gusting in her face. Bear or man? Move or freeze? A rustle, not the wind, and she whirls, lifting the gun as the safety clicks free under her thumb, and her index finger tightens on the trigger. She can feel the pressure of the bullet in the chamber.

"Whoa! Bones!" Booth. Wet Booth, hands raised, his Magnum pointed skyward, her boots slung over his shoulder. 

Shaking, Tempe eases her finger off and lowers the gun. "Booth."

Lowering his own gun, but taking a two handed grip on it, he licks his lips, his eyes darting from her left to behind her, up, to the right. "Are you alone?"

"Yes."

He's still watchful, turns his head to check out her hut.

"Booth," she says. "Look at me."

He does, his eyes flat. 

"I'm alone."

He nods, but doesn't move. Temperance isn't sure what to say to him. His hair is wet, but his filthy clothes dry. His jeans are torn at the knee, and his FBI-issued windbreaker won't live to see a washer. He found her. She grins at him. Although his lips compress, his eyes don't soften. She looks down to engage the safety on his twenty-two, and her throat closes. No, no, no. Tears burn her eyes. She blinks hard and fast and turns, crouching down beside the fire. She reaches blindly for her little pile of kindling. He catches her hand and tugs her up and wraps his arms around her. 

He's still holding his gun, she can feel its press against her shoulder blade, but he's solid and warm and he's here. "I'm sorry, Temperance, shhh..." 

He's here. The first fat drops of rain hit her head, her hands, her face. She hangs onto him a moment longer, breathing him in, and then loosens her grip, wipes her face. "Come on. You kept your clothes dry, no use getting wet, now." 

She takes his hand and leads him to her shelter. They scooch into it as far as possible, side-by-side. Their feet will be damp, but they won't get soaked. 

Booth doesn't let go of her hand. Lightning flashes and she counts four before the thunder cracks. By the time the rain is a sideways sweep, the lightning and thunder over top of them, the thatch begins to drip. Still better than being out in it. Booth relaxes, laces his fingers through hers and leans a little closer. She leans back, presses against his shoulder. "I saw you," she says, but he doesn't respond, and when she looks from the rain to him, his eyes are closed.

*

"What is that?" Booth asks from the bank. 

She hears the frown in his voice. She laughs. "It's a fish fence."

"You're something else."

There's three smallish brown trout swaying inside. "Dinner!" she says, triumphant. "There's a knife on my right boot. You can clean these, right?"

She plunges both hands into the water, scoops up a trout and tosses it up the bank at his feet. Booth produces her knife from his front pocket. 

"Found that, did you?"

He slaps the flopping trout down, hooks a finger through its gill, slices through the midline, and dumps its vitals. She blinks. The very focused way he does it, the act strikes her as brutal. She's seen and performed the gutting of fish a thousand times over and never felt the curling in her stomach she does now. 

"Heads?" he says.

"Uh, no."

He cuts the head off, flays the sides from the back bone, scoops it, the organs, and the head up, stands and flings them mid-stream. "Next." 

"Booth, I'll do it."

"What."

Tempe doesn't know who this Booth is and doesn't like him. She grabs the next fish and tosses it at him. Watches until he slices, and then captures the third and squelches up the bank to hand it to him. The lines between his eyes deepen as he takes it.

"What," he says again. 

It's not a question and she can't answer it anyway. She scowls back, sets her jaw, grabs up the small iron pot her captors left her, and that Booth drank dry, and heads back to the stream.

"Bones," Booth says behind her.

"My name is Temperance," she flings over her shoulder. 

***

Temperance is wading away from him, upstream, the small pot in her hands, though she hasn't filled it yet. "My name is Seeley, " he mutters to the last fish. "And I'm so fucking hungry, I could eat you raw." 

He washes the fish and stalks back to the copse. She's got her fire pit lined in logs, and he lays the fish on one while he works to revive the fire. He removes all the drenched wood and pushes the wet ashes to the edges. There's still warmth in the center, but no embers. He retrieves half an armload of mostly dry wood from her lean-to and gets it stacked before Bones shows up and sets down the pot, her bare feet caked in black dirt. She's got long, narrow feet, with pretty toes.

She hits him in the shoulder while he's stripping bark, and when he looks up, she's got a waterproof canister of matches in her hand. Hallelujah. It still takes him ten minutes of praying and huffing to get a little flame kindled. His head is killing him. She's moving all around him, first into the lean-to, and then back over to the fish, and then off into the woods and back. It takes all his concentration to keep on task. His hands are shaking by the time he sits back on his heels and waits to see what the flames need next. They catch, starting into the bigger chunks in the stack. 

Bones eases the pot into the pit, halfway in the flames, and Booth licks his lips, wondering how long before the water boils, and then cools enough to drink. 

"Here," she says, "do you want to hold this, or should I try to prop them up?"

She's spitted the fish well on thin, stripped sticks. Leaving the heads on would've been better, though. He reaches out and takes one. "Maybe you can prop the other."

She does, fussing with it until it's however she thinks it should be. Maybe he should have just held both. He notices she's wearing her boots.

"You were drugged," she says, apropos of nothing.

Yeah, and how. "I know."

She nods and shuts up again and he just doesn't have the patience or strength to draw her out right now.

*

Staring into the flames, Booth wishes he hadn't eaten four of the six fillets. His stomach's not happy. It's gurgling and wrestling to tame what he thought was pretty mild. 

"If you help me move the pot, the water can start cooling."

He struggles up and helps, and he feels better away from the flames where it's cooler. "I think, I think I'm just gonna sit right here," he says, since he is, whether he wants to or not. After he sits, he ends up sinking over, until he's on his back, and that's... that's much better.

Bones floats down beside him. After a minute, he realizes he's seeing the Milky Way for the first time in years and points. "Cassiopeia."

"And Cepheus. There's Gemini."

"You did good, Bones, out here. A lot of people would've just curled up in a hypothermic little ball."

"I worked, Booth." She rolls over and props herself up on her elbow. "They wanted me to separate Jack Stratton's victims from the older remains and I did."

"How?"

"They had a lab; I did what I could. They gave me two assistants."

"Where were we?"

"I don't know. I tried, Booth. I could see you, on a monitor, until you took out the camera."

Satisfaction of a job well done rising up in him again, Booth smiles. 

"And to think I worried over you," Bones says and grins back.

Booth sobers and really looks at her. He can, here, lying on his back in the dark. His head is clearing, his stomach has decided the fish is better than nothing. "I worried about you."

She nods and bites her lip.

"You're okay? They didn't..."

"No." She sits up, facing him, crosses her legs. "My needs were met. They threatened to kill you if I didn't go along with what they wanted. They seemed serious, Booth, so I did. I was blindfolded and gagged when we were taken. We drove for hours. You were... they drugged you. They wore masks the entire time. I can describe them to Angela, but I'm not sure about mouths and noses and cheeks. I don't think I can say for sure I could recognize any of them. Their accents weren't distinctive, their voices weren't distinctive. I saw nothing that would help identify where I was being held."

"I could smell the ocean," Booth offers.

"Really? The air in the lab was ozonated, I think. Nobody used cologne or perfume."

"They were helping Stratton."

"No. No, actually, I have those remains here, his victims. That's one reason I didn't try to walk out, yet."

Ah. He had wondered. Sure, she was barefoot, but why stay? Even if she could feed herself, it was uncomfortable and cold. "What were the others?"

She taps her boot. "Bare feet."

He feels like a bastard, but he waits her out. He wants to hear her say it. Not that it changes anything; they're partners, and Booth's pretty sure she's David's for now, anyway. It's a really bad idea to sharpen the vague need he feels when he's with her to make her want to be with him, not just for his skills or his case work, but just because she likes him. A worse idea than leaving the deer track for her, worse than crossing the river before the storm, worse than expending so much energy hunting her rather than help. 

"If they weren't..." he says, just as she says, "They said you'd...

"Go ahead," they both say.

"They said you'd be here, to wait, and you'd come."

He sits up, scruffs his hand over the stubble on his cheeks. It itches. "You believed them."

"I was planning on leaving in the morning." She leans over and checks the water.

"How long have you been here?"

She pulls the pot over next to her, tips it up to pour for him. "Wash your hands. This is my third night. You?" 

The water's still warm. He rubs his hands together, scrubs at the tops of his fingers. "Second. How'd you get here?"

"I don't know. I assume my breakfast contained a drug."

Booth grunts. Probably the same something that would've been 'not the hard way' for him. "I must've been out longer. If you have Stratton's victims, they wanted the older bones, the indians?" He takes the pot and pours for her, a splash of water into each palm.

"They weren't just Native Americans, Booth, there were Europeans, too. The man I spoke to called himself Mr. Beech, like the tree. He intimated they know who those people were, know their names, or family names. There are long traditions of oral history among the tribes, so I suppose it's possible. They didn't want to wait for forensic analysis and the eventual assignment to a tribe for repatriation. They want their people laid to rest again as soon as possible. Mr. Beech said Stratton had an agenda they didn't want to be a part of- I think it's possible Jack Stratton chose that cemetary to bury his victims in because he wanted to expose Mr. Beech and his organization."

Or maybe they just wanted to steal old bones for use in herbal remedies, or voo-doo or, what was that called? Shamanism. "They were indians?"

"All the people I saw appeared to have a least one distinct characteristic of Native American heredity."

"So, that's a yes." He cups his hands and nods at the pot. "I'll drink it warm." 

She pours for him, until he's had his fill, and then he pours for her. It's flat, with a hint of rust, and he's still thirsty, but he'll wait until later for more. "No canteen? A waterskin, maybe?"

"A waterskin? No. Oh, I do have our cell phones, though." 

Booth raises his brows, but she shakes her head. "Dead." 

He picks at the raised scar on his thumb and stares at the dying fire. He tilts his head towards it. "We need to build that up?"

Bones rises and raids the dry wood, pokes at the fire and then comes back to him and sits. She holds out her hand. "These are yours."

It's his picture of Parker and his lucky poker chip. He doesn't unfold the picture, just slides it into the front pocket of his jeans. He rubs the chip, his thumb falling into smooth groove he's worn into it like a worry stone. His rosary. Hail, Mary, full of grace. Bones is full of grace. She sits tall, her arms wrapped around her knees, seeming not so out of place here in the woods as he might have thought not so long ago. 

Bones is gazing off into the trees towards the river, rocking slightly. It sounds like a crowd in a stadium. Maybe if he wanders that way, he'll find himself under the hot lights of a ball field, buy her crackerjacks and make her laugh. "Do you know of Virginia Dare?" she says.

At least three different images paint themselves in full living color before he can blink. They all involve removing clothes. "Uh, I usually just play Dare."

She laughs and at least he got that right. "No. Virginia Dare was the first documented British child born in the colonies."

"Jamestown."

"No, the lost colony at Roanoke."

"Roanoke, North Carolina."

"Back then, it was in Virginia."

"And... ?"

Booth studies her profile. She looks far away from him and this wet place in the dark. 

"Bones, is that even a remote possibility? The remains of Virginia Dare?"

She looks at him, her eyes bright. "It could never be proven."

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

Comfortable, she wiggles back against the firm, yielding warmth of man and sighs. Arm wrapped over her, he hugs her in closer. She can feel him there, hard against her. She lifts her hand, and strokes the wondrous curve of his skull, running her fingers through his short hair, onto the heat of his neck. He nuzzles under her ear, and his arm tightens around her... fully clothed waist. Her jacket's twisted. She's damp. 

Under the debris hut, Temperance sits up. Booth's arm falls away and he rolls onto his back. She blinks at him and he smiles, as he tucks his hands behind his head. "You're wide awake," she accuses. 

"You were shivering." he says.

There's a dawn feel in the air and the birds are starting to question the day; the light is flat and grey. He's rumpled and scruffy and totally appealing. When her eyes move from the hard-on he's not bothering to conceal to his eyes, she sees she's providing his morning's amusement. It's a natural reaction, she tells herself. She's glad he's not embarrassed. She raises a brow. "I should put some wood on."

His cheeks ghost up, an almost-smile. He says, "I let it go out. We have enough water to get us moving."

There’s no way they can carry everything out. And the woods are too close for a sled. They don’t know where they are- it’s best to stay put now that there are two of them. Except that they don’t know where they are, and there’s no way to signal here. "The bones?"

"We're leaving them."

She doesn’t want to leave them and she doesn’t want him to leave her. "They're evidence, Booth. I’ll stay."

He sits up, transforming into Agent Booth in seconds. "We're leaving them."

*

They walk downstream and downslope nearly three hours by Tempe's watch, looking at their feet most of the way. The footing's slick on the rocks and the bank uneven. There's piles of deadfall that require them to find a way around. It's warmer and they stuff both jackets in the pot, which they pass back and forth between them as they go.

"Bridge," is all Booth says when he spots the simple wooden frame across the river. 

They have to climb up to it, but their reward is a rutted, pea-gravel road headed in both directions. They know they saw no lights in the valley or peaks for viewing from to the west, so they go east, uphill.

Not half a mile down the road, a rattling pick-up appears around the switch-back in front of them. It slows, and then fish-tails to a stop. 

"Stop where you are, your hands in the air," echos a voice rough as the gravel under their feet. It's issuing from a speaker mounted on the truck. 

Setting down the iron pot, Booth does as he's told. Temperance looks askance at him and yells across the intervening space. "I'm Dr. Temperance Brennan. This is Special Agent Seeley Booth."

Booth just shakes his head, hands up and open.

The voice says, "Stand still and put your hands behind your head." It's a beat-up government issued Chevy, with a park logo of some kind on the rippled passenger door.

"Temperance." Booth says. He sounds like he’s in pain.

"Okay," she whispers, and complies.

"Step forward one at a time and lay down your weapons."

Keeping one hand up, Booth picks his Magnum from his shoulder holster with two fingers and crouches in slow motion to lay it down in front of him.

"Step back. Step away from the gun."

"Your turn," Booth says.

"You have it," Temperance hisses.

"Just step forward, and turn around slow, Bones. Slow."

She does. The driver's door pops open and the ranger levels a rifle in their direction.

"Turn sideways, sir, and stand still," he says. He tosses a set of cuffs onto the road. "You," he says, tipping the barrel at Temperance. "Cuff him. Hands behind his back."

"I'm Dr. Bren..."

"I don't care, lady. Cuff him, then we'll talk."

As she closes the first bracelet around his wrist, Booth says, "There's a twenty-two at my ankle," loud enough for the ranger to hear and like she doesn't know already. 

"Thank you," the ranger says and Temperance rolls her eyes.

"What happened to not cooperating? Remember New Orleans?" 

"This is different. We need him."

She closes the second one a bit too hard. 

He twists away from her. "Ow. He has a rifle, Temperance, don't get me killed." He's mad. At her.

"Step over here, Ma'am." He throws another set of cuffs out. They land by the front tire of the truck. "See those three rings welded to the hood? Pick one."

Temperance nods and cuffs herself. The ranger slides out from behind his battered door, points the rifle down without engaging the safety, uses the side of his boot to kick the .357 to the edge of the long roadside grass, and sidles around to Booth. He pats him down one-handed, and comes up with Booth's wallet and badge. Temperance is mildly impressed he doesn't make himself vulnerable by stooping to take Booth's twenty-two. He's rough, square-jawed, probably mid-forties, though he looks a decade older. As tall as Booth, but narrow through the shoulders, and with the beginnings of middle-age spread. 

"Agent Seeley Booth?" he says.

Booth nods.

"Are you compromised, sir?"

"No." Booth says.

"Please sit on the ground, sir."

He turns his attention back to Temperance. "Do you have identification, ma'am?"

"Yes. Right front pocket."

He extracts her FBI site identification badge, the one issued to her what feels like a year ago at Douglas Point, and retreats to his truck. Booth shrugs and quirks his lips at her. She's nearly boiling with annoyance and in just the sort of instance when she'd expect to see his temper rise, he looks like he's sitting on the beach instead of cross-legged in the dirt.

"It's okay, Temperance," he says, and she doesn't like how easily he reads her. "It's procedure."

The truck door slams and the ranger smiles for the first time. It transforms his face and Tempe sees the good-looking college boy hiding inside. "They been looking for you two on the other side of the state," he says as he unlocks Tempe's cuffs. "Want me to keep you right here."

Finally. "Where are we?" Temperance asks as the ranger hooks a hand through Booth's elbow and helps him stand.

"Savage River State Park," he says, unlocking Booth's cuffs. He holds out Booth’s ID and badge.

Booth takes them, frowning. It occurs to her that she sees that expression a lot. "In?"

"Upstate Maryland. Might as well be West Virginia, though. Ya'll thirsty?" 

Booth gestures at his gun and the ranger nods his permission for Booth to pick it back up.

"Not exactly standard issue, Agent. Got me worried," he says.

He gives them luke-warm bottles of water and packages of stale trail mix. They sit on his tail gate and swing their feet for awhile. Temperance is already thinking about what she needs to do at the lab, delegating research. Jack will be able to ferret out all she needs on Roanoke. When one hour turns into two and then some, the ranger hands his bagged lunch over, and Tempe shares his tuna sandwich with Booth. 

It's the best tuna Tempe's ever had; she's wiping mayo from the corner of her mouth and arguing with Booth and Steve about the words to "Daniel", when the Bureau descends in the form of a helicopter that hovers low and then disappears in the direction of the bridge, followed, in seconds, by the appearance of two Humvees and a panel truck holding assorted agents, two ATV's and four dogs.

"It's 'stars in the sky', not 'scars in my eyes' " Booth says. Then it's chaos, like the flash-bang of a percussion grenade, and she doesn't hear his voice again for three days.

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

Watching Bones through the one-way glass, Booth feels the calm place he found in the woods shredding. The depression reasserting itself, reclaiming him cell by cell over the last few weeks, had dissipated with the fog the day he woke wrapped around her. Maybe those unwilling days to brood and dream revenge, to be a physical animal, to think in ways he didn't need to anymore, using all of himself until there was nothing left, were just what he needed. Maybe he'll always be more killer than detective. He knows he feels like getting physical with the agent questioning Bones right now; wants to wrap his fingers around fat boy's throat and feel the tips go numb with the pressure.

He looks to Cullen. "She's done, sir." 

Only force of habit, long ingrained through brutal experience, keeps him to heel until Cullen nods without turning from the glass.

He's out one door and in the other in six strides. The door bangs against the wall and Bones and the agent look up, eyes wide, mouths open. "She's done." 

He doesn't bark, he thinks he sounds pretty restrained, but the agent stands so fast, his chair falls over, and Booth realizes he's halfway across the room. He stops, and cocks his chin in Cullen's direction through the glass. Fat boy looks at himself in the mirror, but spins defensively when Bones stands. 

"She's done," Booth repeats. "C'mon, Bones." He holds out his arm, encouraging her, and as she passes him, he turns and follows her, his hand at the small of her back. 

She stands rigid as they wait for the elevator.

"Bones..."

She shakes her head, staring down, and when he ducks his head, trying to get her to look at him, she closes her eyes.

Hurt lances him, heat speeding through his veins and he straightens, his face flushing. He can be a cold-hearted bastard at will, knows how to drop a chilled wall right through himself, erasing everything but focus. That one won't come on line, and neither will cool reserve or indifference. All those kinds of cover seem to fail when he's dealing with her. He glances down at the files in his hand. As the doors open and they step in, Booth slaps them against Bones' chest, startling her into talking to him.

"What are these?"

"Write-ups from the FBI lab on the three partially decayed corpses at Douglas Point. They were re-routed following the incident, and a forensic specialist flown in to establish them as Jack Stratton's latest victims."

"A forensic specialist?"

He ignores her. She can ask properly if she really wants an answer. "They aren't Stratton's. No one wants you on the case because of conflict, but there's not really a choice, since you did the field evaluation. You're being asked to review and comment. Any further hands-on will be conducted per your instruction by our techs." He emphasized "ours", feeling his walls start to strengthen.

"How did our captors," Bones says, emphasizing "our". Cheeky, that's what his mother would call her. "... manage to steal the skeletal remains with all those agents and techs on site?"

"They didn't tell you?"

"No, Booth. I haven't been told anything not related directly to evidence, and the FBI lab got first swipe at everything, so god only knows what got lost along the way."

"The FBI lab isn't stocked with imbeciles, Temperance. They just aren't off the chart like you."

Her eyes narrow and she opens her mouth. On her face, Booth can actually see his words cross her brain like the flicker of firelight. Her lips press together and then spring back to fullness. He can feel her hand gliding down the curve of his skull. The sense memory is so strong, his eyes close. He looks away.

"How?" she says.

"At bolt-point."

"Cross bows?"

"Yes. All their guns, cell phones, talkies and pagers were taken and left two miles up the road in a federal mail box. All the vehicles were disabled. It took awhile before they realized we were gone." 

The elevator doors open. She falls silent again and Booth lets her. He listens to their heels on the marble of the lobby, hearing the clang of metal in a sea breeze. She reads all the way to the Jeffersonian. 

*

He's trailing behind her as they cross the lab. She swipes her card, and bounces up the steps. He sets the buzzer off. Two guards are on him before he can step back down. Booth raises his hands, swipes his card and shrugs at Angela, who at least looks happy to see him. She comes and gives him a hug. 

"We were so worried."

"Thanks, Angela."

Hodgins leans back from the scope he's peering in and sticks his hand out. Booth shakes it. "Glad you're back, g-man. Nothing useful left on your clothes, everything traces back to Savage River. Wish you'd managed to sneak that chunk of stone out."

"They must've emptied my pockets before dumping me."

"I've got samples for you to look at, all textured, so feel 'em, too. I ran some geologics along the coast. Could be limestone. There's sinkholes along the North Carolina coast that could maybe, that's a huge maybe, man, be carved out and re-enforced to hold someone. I've got a tech pulling satellite images, and the FBI lab says they're looking, too." 

"Thanks, Jack."

Hodgins points at a table on the far side of the dais from where Bones has settled in beside Zach at a computer. "Samples over there." He glances at Bones. "You really ticked her off."

"You should've at least called her, Booth," Angela says. "You called us."

"Under surveillence, to detail your information," Booth says, using his forefinger for emphasis. "I wasn't allowed to speak to her, under orders. She knows that. She should understand that. We were off the radar over a week. You don't just go back to your routine after something like that, not when it involves a mass murderer and kidnapping." 

"I didn't know, sweetie."

Hodgins is back to staring into his scope. "Conflicting stories, shared memory... didn't want you to taint each other's statements. That's not why she's mad at you."

Talk about support from unexpected quarters. Booth's confused. He thought she was mad because he didn't rescue her from his fellow agents fast enough- not that he hadn't been in need of being rescued from them himself. "You have a pet theory, Jack?"

"You had her bones sent to Dr. Wolff."

"What? No, I didn't." But after he'd been pulled off Savage River, following the recovery of the Crime Lab tubs from their camp site, anything may have happened. He'd labeled the tubs for the Jeffersonian, filled in the required forms and initialed every required copy, but it wasn't his case, and he'd spent the last three days in debrief. Shit. 

"Bones!" He crosses the short distance to her, though she doesn't acknowledge him. "Hey, Bones, Temperance."

Booth's hands hover and then he decides, yes, he is going to touch her. He feels her stiffen as he takes both her shoulders in his hands, but she doesn't resist when he urges her up to face him. "I did not send your bones to Dr. Wolff. The Maryland Field Office was in charge of the case. If the bones went to Wolff, it was on their directive."

"That's not why I'm mad at you."

Booth sighs. He drops his hands. "Will you tell me?"

"Yes. Later. Zach, keep working on that thought, it might be helpful," she says, and Booth knows he's off the hook for whatever, for the time being. "Hodgins? Can you tell me what you found out about the lost colony?" She turns, including Booth. "Us. Can you tell us? Why don't you go look at those samples, Booth."

Shooing him away from her space, but not banishing him, Booth can live with that. While Jack rustles through file folders, Bones closes ranks with Angela, looking at the uppermost sheet on her clipboard and nodding. "That's almost right. I think the edges flared more, sweeping up. Ms. Pines' circled almost up above her brow. Have you ascertained if the painted symbols are tribal or random?"

Booth surveys the samples before him while Angela talks. There's about thirty different kinds of stone, rock, concrete. He runs his fingers over them.

"Random, I think. There's no pattern repeated, and none of my programs have kicked back any recognition, partial or otherwise. From your descriptions, every mask a variation, they had to be hand carved. Unfortunately, there's a lot of tribal carvers in the US. Without a sample, there's no way to narrow the search, not even to technique, let alone tribe."

"I can narrow the tribes for you," Jack asserts, and Booth doesn't have to look at Bones or Angela to see the twin expressions on their faces, that tone can only mean one thing...

"This nation's first cover-up, that's what the lost colony at Roanoke was... wait, wait." 

And that's Angela rolling her eyes and Bones' lips thinning. Booth sets three samples aside and turns to watch the show, setting a hip on the table and getting comfortable.

"Raleigh owned the land grant from Queen Elizabeth and abandoned the colony not once, but twice. The first time, the colonists were picked up and transported by merchants off to more profitable locations. The second set weren't so lucky. Supply crews got side-tracked privateering and never arrived to offer relief. Although Raleigh couldn't afford to return, he wanted the myth of a successful settlement to remain in place, because that kept his land grant in effect for his future good fortune. But, this time Roanoke wasn't just some deportee's destination. It was the site of the new world's first scientific laboratory, and a wealthy governor had sailed off after settlement, leaving his pregnant daughter behind with her new husband. Two years after the second colony was established, not knowing Raleigh had failed to supply the colony, he managed to return, only to find Roanoke again abandoned, this time with no record of intervention by merchants or other countries trying to horn in.” Jack narrows his eyes and lowers his voice, a kid telling a ghost story. “There was only the word Croatan carved on a post. The houses were in ruins, but most of the furniture and tools remained, along with the lab equipment. The Croatians lived on a different, nearby, barrier island. Assuming the colonists were there, an attempt was made to recover them, but a storm blew in, and after two crew members died, the ship's captain ran to sea. Governor White was never able to return and follow up on the lead. By the time someone else did, even the indians had moved on. The legend of The Lost Colony never died. Raleigh insisted the colonists had simply moved to the mainland, maybe trying to work their way towards Chesapeake Bay, which had been the originally intended jumping off point for colonization, anyway."

"So, no one knows what happened to them," Angela says. Her eyes are soft.

"Not technically, but this is where it gets interesting,” Jack says, grinning. “Just fifty years after Roanoke, there are reports of grey-eyed Indians living on the piedmont, below the foothills of the Appalachians, who live in cabins and speak English. And after Jamestown is settled, there are rumours of at least three Roanoke survivors living close by, with Indians, but no one ever manages to actually locate them. Various tribes claim the Roanoke ancestors as their own, and some claim credit for their deaths. There's a couple of different tribes that have been ruled out. It's been proven genetically that they're linked to Portuguese and Spanish ancestors, not English."

"Like the Melugians." Bones. Where she gets this stuff from, Booth can only hope to take advantage of, never know. His brain just isn't wired that way.

Jack points at her. "Exactly. And a lot of the smaller, distinct, more aggressively insular tribes were swallowed whole by the larger ones, who assimilated better, like the Cherokee. But.” He pauses and brandishes the files he’s holding, unable to contain his glee. “But, there is a tribe who has been so overwhelmingly European for so long, that the federal government has never recognized them as Native American, even though they have a long, oral tradition and culture. The Lumbees have long claimed to be the descendants of the Croatians and the lost colonists. Their best proof is that there's no reason they couldn't be." 

"Wasn't Virginia Dare..." Zach pipes up.

"Yeah, she was, Governor John White’s granddaughter, the first documented British birth in the New World."

Booth waits to see if Bones will tell them she may have handled Virginia Dare's mortal remains, but the moment passes in silence.

Instead, she says, "The Lumbees. Do you have any other information on them, Jack?"

He shakes his head. "Not much, what I turned up was pretty vague, but I'll keep digging." 

Booth knows a source. Actually he knows two, but the second's been on the FBI's Most Wanted List for years. "I can query Indian Country for info, I think. Cullen won't let me in officially on Henson's case, but the Maryland office knows I want to help."

"Indian Country?" Zach asks.

"A Bureau unit assigned to Indian Affairs. Even if the Lumbees have never been recognized, there should be plenty of info on them."

"Booth," Bones says. "Didn't Agent Henson say..."

"His grandmother was full Cherokee. On it." He unclips his phone, walking already, and hands Jack the three samples he pulled on the way. "Here, these three. I'll be up on the mezzanine if you need me." He trots down the steps, happy to have something constructive to do.

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

Hours later, Temperance finds him slumped on one of the couches tucked into a corner above the lab. His long legs are stretched out in front of him and he's staring up into the rafters. Early evening sun stripes his face. A laptop is open on the low table in front of him, but the screen's dark, she sees, as she drops down beside him. "Hey."

Stillness personified, he says, "Talking to me, now?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He rolls his head and gives her his smallest smile, the one that just tweaks the corners of his lips. 

"You could have told me what to expect, Seeley."

The use of his first name has him sitting up. There's power in the use of a name. Lots of cultures believe that, but it'd never been a personal conviction of hers until she met Booth. It's time she starts wielding that power as well as he does.

"We were talking song lyrics and names of trees and cloud formations when you could've been telling me to expect to be treated as a suspect, to expect to defend my actions, to tell them thirty times why I couldn't mark our path through the woods or escape the car or refuse to sort the bones or why I waited for you, without setting up a distress signal of some sort. Apparently, 'there wasn't a clearing large enough to set a big, attention getting fire in the dry woods' wasn't good enough. And neither was 'it was obviously not our captors intention to see us harmed', ergo matches and a pot."

He's thoughtful, rubs his chin and runs his thumb across his lips, which she appreciates, but she wants him to say something to make her feel better, to feel... not betrayed, not deceived. She prefers skimming his mysteries, his deep spots, not getting dunked in them. She's not ready for that. She doesn't want to know the Booth standing on the river bank, the Booth who refuses to hide his arousal, the Booth who would shoot a father standing next to his child. See his reflection in her Booth's eyes, listen to his hurt, touch his thigh, yes. Know him? No. Not yet. Her heart stops for an instant too long, before thumping extra hard and picking up again. Not yet, but she thinks one day she might want to know all of him.

He shifts, tucks one leg up under the other to face her. "Do you remember, on the Kent case, how all the witnesses described the enemy AK-47 fire as 'pop, pop, pop'"?

"Yes, you said their testimony was rehearsed."

"But the stories were each a bit different. Consistent but tuned to each man's duty."

"Yes?"

Surprising her, he picks up her hand. The sound of rain bouncing off leaves and cedar boughs and the ground comes rushing in on her. She lets him fold his hand around hers. "I don't want to hurt you, Temperance, but you already have a pretty big shield up, nothing much surprises you. You step into a fight rather than stepping away. You're literal. You're not... typical... in your responses to most anything. You think. I didn't want anyone," he says, squeezing her hand on the ‘anyone’. "...thinking I rehearsed you. I wanted your reactions to be natural- to the circumstances, the questions, the suspicion. We didn't talk much about what happened. I didn't allow it, although I wanted to know, Bones, I did. I wanted to know." 

"But we were in two different places, Booth, we had totally different statements."

"Sometimes telling it reduces the emotions, smooths the memories, helps the brain deal with the trauma. And if we told each other our very different experiences, invariably, we would end up sharing phrases or sliding in hearsay as our own. You say we were transported in three different vehicles. If I'd known that, I may have incorporated it, said I knew that for a fact, when actually, all I remembered when they asked me was whack."

"Whack?"

"Hellacious dreams." He looks down, at their hands, closes his eyes for a moment, wincing.

"Hellacious?"

"Yeah," he says, looking up. He smiles at her. "I read."

And, for some reason, she feels better. "That's a comic book word."

He feigns hurt, laying a hand on his chest. "You'd mock Batman?"

"I bet I could teach Batman a thing or two," she says, making sure it comes out smug.

He does something, that all peaceful thing he can do with his body and looks at her from under his lashes and her lower belly tightens, a tingle shooting up the base of her spine. "I bet you could."

She's a deer, stranded in a flashlight beam.

He lets go of her hand, grabs the files stashed under the laptop, and starts sorting the papers onto his knees. "Want to see what I found out?" 

***

What Booth found out was that Mayport Rock bought the Douglas Point property from a private corporation originally founded by a partnership of four men who'd officially owned the land, and the land surrounding it, for better than two hundred years, the land and the partnership passing from son to son to son until there was only one. Turner Colvin. 

"Turner Colvin," Booth tells the squints the forty minutes later. "...applied for a college grant claiming Native American ancestry; his father was a Lumbee."

"The plot thickens," Jack says from his perch on the arm of the couch.

Bones' says, "It gets better. Turner's father, Simmons Colvin, married his mother, Sarah Minor, in 1965. Turner was born in '66. Sarah's sister, Rebecca, five years her junior, met and married Stephen Stratton in the month before he left for Vietnam in 1967. And gave birth to Jack Stratton seven months later."

Booth watched the squints' gazes graze off each other's faces, the frowns. "You mean eight months, Bones," he says, just for fun.

She slips her hands in her pockets. "Nope. Seven months. Full term."

"So who was Jack Stratton's father?" Zach says.

Angela is the one getting it. Booth puts on his poker face as she looks back and forth between him and Bones. "Simmons Colvin," she says.

Booth nods. "Colvin never acknowledged Jack Stratton as his own, but Stratton's his spitting image. Colvin died in '98."

"And Turner inherited the kingdom of Douglas Point," Jack says 

Zach looks at Hodgins and Hodgins looks back. Booth clears his throat.

"And sold it," Angela says.

"To Mayport Rock, for an amazing amount of money," Booth continues. "And Jack Stratton's left out in the cold, along with the descendants of the original partnership. Said descendants are mostly still involved in their Lumbee heritage. A lot of them have intermarried, among the Lumbees and the Catawbas, a recognized tribe." 

"Okay," Angela says, "But Jack Stratton's been killing people for twenty years, how does that fit in?" 

Booth admires her. She just gets it, connects the bigger picture dots, although her job depends on details. 

"I don't think it does," Booth says. "He's just whatever it is that serial killers are. But, it does point to a motivation for burying the bodies there."

Jack nods. "Payback."

"But the freshest bodies aren't his." Angela says.

Glancing at Booth first, Bones says, "Stratton's adaptable, but no, their physical traits and presentation don't match Stratton's usual MO. We think it's a possibilty the people who kidnapped us were protecting that site, and may be responsible for those victims."

"Grave robbers," Zach says.

"We can't say that, Zach," Bones says. "The victims may be completely innocent of any wrong doing."

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Jack says.

Booth nods.

“You mean,” Angela says. “Maybe the victims were grave robbers, and your bad guys killed them?”

“No,” Bones counters, glaring at Booth. 

Like a little conjecture ever hurt. He tilts his head in the oh-well gesture that had gotten him grounded again and again as a teen. Bones has nothing on his mother’s glare. “No. Just a thought,” he concedes, just to keep the peace.

“We know they aren’t Jack Stratton’s. That’s all we know,” Bones says firmly. 

"Do we get to go to Bethesda?" Jack asks.

"Yes, but mostly to direct the FBI techs. The victims have odd shaped wounds. Booth and I suspect a bolt from a crossbow may have been used and removed, so take samples for comparison. I want live video of everything you're doing."

"Should we take our own pigs?"

"Eww." Angela says.

"Yes," Bones says. "And take your beetles, Zach, I don't know what they have for de-fleshing."

Booth decides he's glad she's not mad at him anymore.

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

Crouched on a lakeshore, the sun brilliant overhead, she's counting vertebraes, sorting them into piles by size- small, medium, large. The large ones are big- cow big or horse big. A shadow falls across her, but she doesn't look up. It's just Booth. He stoops and scoops up a handful of smalls and tosses them one at a time, like skipping stones, far out into the water. She pauses and watches. They skip a long way, four and five and six times before sinking without a ripple. Tempe reaches for him, touches his thigh, and her fingers sink into him without a ripple until they touch bone, and then she ripples, her hips lifting, her head dropping back, her ears ringing...

Phone. She slaps a hand down flat on the nightstand, but it's not there. Reaching over the side of her bed, she gropes along the floor. There. "Brennan."

"It's Booth."

She sits up, looking for the clock. Her eyelids are lead. Only just after eleven. She's been sleeping in her clothes. "Yeah. I'm here." Obviously, or she wouldn't be speaking. She starts unlacing her Doc Martens. 

"I'm at Medico-Legal. Where are you?"

"Home."

"Home?"

"Yes, Booth, you know, that place where one sleeps for, oh, three or four hours every couple of days?"

Booth laughs in her ear. "Oh, that place. I'll pick you up in an hour. I know a great place for Thursday brunch." He's shuffling stuff. 

"No." She can hear paper flipping, odd muted slides as he moves... the stacks of folders on her desk around. "And what are you looking for? You're in my office, aren't you?"

"The Keller case report, y'know, girl in the trunk?"

"Yes, but..."

"Lawyer Warrington," he stretches out the name and twists it and she can see his brows going up as his head tilts derisively. "... is insisting a page is missing from her copy. She wants to view the original report, and she wants to talk to you sometime this afternoon. Court dates should be decided next week."

"Booth..." It came out softer than she intended, more an exhalation of breath than a word. She flops back on the bed, her muscles gone all limp at the thought of dragging herself further than the shower.

"Bones?" Stillness from his end. Standing tall now, she thought. Phone pressed to his ear, nearly hidden by his long fingers. Instant concern, that slight frown of his probably hardening his face like it hardened his voice. 

"I don't want to go." Way to sound whiny, Brennan. She tries again. "I want to take a shower and write for two hours and then meet with Zach and Hodgins to go over everything from Bethesda."

"I'm sorry, Bones, it's important. Warrington's flying out tonight on another case."

Tempe stifles a sigh, but pounds her boots against the bed. "The file's in the second drawer of the wooden cabinet to your left, if you're sitting in my chair. Dr. Wolff sent us everything on the Stratton skeletons from Douglas Point, and Dr. Caber faxed the field reports, so Angela's correlating to see what the Angelator can show us. Could you check and see what she's got?"

"Yeah. I'll call Agent Henson, too, see who's on ID, and if they need help." He's on the move again. "I've got the file, thanks."

She hesitates, modulating the surliness out of her voice before she speaks. "You're welcome." 

"Listen, why don't you shower and write, and I'll pick up lunch on the way to get you."

"What makes you think I don't have food here?"

He laughs again, and it feels like fuel, filling up her empty reserves. "2:00?"

"Okay." 

He disconnects and she sits up. Give a little, get a little. She's actually been consciously working on the giving part. She wonders if Booth noticed, if he was rewarding her or just responding. If she showers fast, she can squeeze in two and half hours towards her publisher's deadline. She thinks of Booth, striding down the hall to Angela. 

She expands on the image, shifts his features to dirty blonde and blue-eyed, lowers his height, changes the colors of the walls he's walking past, his clothes morph, becoming more European, his jacket lengthens. The sounds of a busy Canadian police precinct filter in, phones ringing, doors slamming, someone drops a coffee mug, people talking. In French for the most part. And it's cold. Her detective has snow dusting his shoulders and melting in his hair. Yeah, she feels like writing. 

Her phone rings. It's David. If she answers, that'll be at least ten minutes gone, maybe more. She lets it ring and goes to shower.

***

Booth's standing on the curb, bags in both hands, gauging traffic for a dash to his Yukon. He's hoping Bones likes either rotisserie grilled chicken or citrus sautéed salmon, because he got both, and salads, and chocolate bread pudding to boot. He hasn't quite shaken his empty, yet, and he's developed a renewed appreciation for flavor. He's got a surprise for her, and figures they'll miss dinner, anyway.

The beige Toyota coupe slows as it goes by, and that's the only reason he notices it. The face in the window has dark hair and a sharp nose. Strong cheekbones. Light eyes that widen in surprise when they meet his. Danny Ghilley. Fellow Ranger. Sniper. Dishonorable discharge for taking a bribe. Wanted for questioning on a suspicious death warrant issued eight years ago. Booth had faced heavy questioning himself on that one. 

Carolina plate. CYA-364. He dashes across the street, wrenches his door open and slings the food into the passenger side as he slams his door. Barely glancing over his shoulder, he slides the Yukon out and u-turns. Horns blare, but there's no following crunch of metal and Booth's shoulders drop incrementally. Ghilley's stuck in traffic on the next block. Booth hits the gas. Snatching up his two-way, he calls in his location, the suspect, the plate and waits for confirmation that the warrant's still valid. 

Down New York to Capitol Street, he's nine cars back coming to the light when Ghilley's driver swings wide into the right turn lane, swerves back to the left and runs the red.

"Damn it!" He hits the lights and siren, but nearly gets his bumper ripped off by a speeding Land Rover when he tips his nose into the lane to his left. Another car whips by, before the next gives him leeway, but there's a line now, and he's stopped dead on an angle. 

No one can move. He lets the siren whine just to share his annoyance. The dispatcher comes back with affirmation and Booth requests back-up. The light changes and everyone works on getting out of his way. Relief wicks through him when he spots the Toyota's turn onto Florida Avenue. He beats it down to the corner, turns, but can't see it again. Tan sedans are everywhere, just not Ghilley's. 

A few minutes later, a bureau vehicle comes from a street on the right and a DC black and white comes towards him on Florida. Booth hits the steering wheel with both hands. They all pass each other at cruising speed, exchanging hard looks, search a mile or so, swing around, and end up converged at P Street. They block the street, cars piling up beyond them, and compare notes.

***

"Bones! Hey, Bones." 

Tempe keeps walking through the great hall of the Jeffersonian, but raises her voice so he can hear her. "I've got things to do, Booth, my things. My things that need to be done." She ignores the looks thrown her way from the people passing her. 

She turns right, under the staircase, bangs through the double doors into the employee access only corridor and swipes her key card through the elevator call box. She watches the numbers. The elevator comes and she steps in and presses the button for the lab. Booth slams through the corridor doors, skids across the slick floor and falls through the elevator doors just as they shut on him. The elevator dings and the doors slide open again. She rolls her eyes at him. She reaches for the ‘close doors’ button, but his hand whips up and punches the red hold button. 

He's breathing hard. "Bones."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why? You were doing your job. I'm doing mine."

"Did Warrington get the originals?"

"Yes, your courier showed up just after we started." she says, and pats her leather case. "I've got them here."

"Good, good."

Do they make men more aggravating than Booth? "Can we go up now?"

"No, not if you want to talk to Stratton."

"Oh." Her pulse jumps. "We can do that?"

"Would it be useful? To you? Agent Henson said Dr. Wolff has deferred final analysis to you." Booth grins. "To spite him, if you listen to him."

"What about conflict of interest?"

"Two different investigations. You can work on Stratton's; the other murders are still officially related to... " He trails off and glances at his feet, then the corridor beyond the open doors.

"Our abduction," Temperance finishes. The elevator's alarm goes off, a beep on immediate repeat, insistent. "You okay?"

"Yeah." He steps out. "You coming?"

She releases the elevator and follows him back out to the parking lot. 

* 

"I feel like we're missing something," Booth says, ten minutes into the ride. "Did you read the reports I gave you last night? The copies of my statements?" 

"Yes."

"Why waterskins instead of jugs or canteens or hell, Dasani?"

"Cultural? They used compound-bows instead of guns. Of course, that's assuming the Native American connection. But even if you don't, bows aren't registered like guns, which makes them a logical, if less effective choice."

"They held fourteen personnel without a problem and managed to delay a response to the situation. That's pretty effective. Why injectible drugs instead of something easy to get us off the trail, like chloroform?"

"Chloroform, and ether for that matter, are harder to come by than a lot of injectibles. Pharmacies, hospitals, urgent care centers, out-patient surgical units, veterinarians- all have half a dozen different injectibles that can be pocketed easily. Ketamine, Tiltamine, Xylazine. And choloform can affect the user if they get a whiff. It causes severe headache, and smells bad. It's hard to control the amount inhaled, so the length of time and depth a subject stays down varies widely. Injectibles are stable. You can give a set amount based on weight and generally count on a minimum time period of effectiveness." 

"Why a jab pole instead of a tranquilizer gun?"

"Have you ever shot a tranq gun?

"No."

"Neither have I," Tempe muses. "I can imagine you'd be a pretty hard target to hit, though."

That earns her a sideways glance and half a smile. 

"Seriously. Using two syringe poles, they controlled both your movement and their injection site, right?”

Booth tips his head, and shrugs.

"I'm guessing the drug was intended to be given intramuscularly. They didn't want to risk hitting a vein and overdosing you, or hitting a thin area over bone and underdosing."

"I remember thinking they were really smart."

"They overcompensated on the lab, but I had everything I needed." She looks out the window, thinking of how the simple meal presentation contrasted to the technology in the lab. Of how she thought the bash of metal she heard was windchimes instead of a calculated torture device, meant to slow Booth's ability to reason and hinder his recall.

"What?" Booth says, and Temperance marvels at how attuned he is to shifts in body language, in her mood.

"Nothing. I was just thinking that maybe the waterskins went with the custom wooden plates and cups. They weren't trying to hide their group identity."

Booth grunts.

"Everything except the lab and transportation was primitive, or at least basic. Torchlight, meals, the clothes were simple, just cotton, I think, muted hues, maybe natural dyes?"

"Sounds like a cult."

"Or a commune."

They laspe into silence. 

After a moment, Booth hits the volume up on his muted radio and lets Louie Armstrong's horn weave its spell.

 


	12. Chapter 12

 

The man sitting shackled at a scarred wooden table in the tiny room they are escorted into is thin, with wide, square shoulders, a long face, patrician nose and deep-set eyes. He looks older than thirty-five, but it's because his skin is weathered brown, and he has deep smile lines. Although he's seen all types and thinks he should be used to it by now, Booth thinks this man looks nothing like a serial killer should. 

Bones slides into the seat next to Agent Henson, and Booth decides to hang back. He leans against the wall directly behind Bones and doesn't look away when Jack Stratton catches and holds his gaze.

"Mr. Stratton," Agent Henson says. "This is Dr. Temperance Brennan from the Jeffersonian. She's a forensic anthropologist who was present at the recovery at Douglas Point."

Stratton dips his head, but is still engaged with Booth. Booth hears Bones take a gusty breath and then she knocks on the table. Stratton smirks and slides his attention to her. 

"Mr. Stratton, I'm wondering if you know the identity of your victims at Douglas Point?"

He shrugs.

"Do you know who owns the property there where you disposed of your victims?"

A nod.

"Do you know the previous owner?"

A nod.

"Do you know the identities of the persons whose graves you disturbed?"

"No, but I should."

"Why is that, Mr. Stratton?"

"It bes my birthright."

"In what way?"

He shakes his head.

Booth says, "We met them, the others who lay claim to that graveyard. You can tell us."

Stratton's eyes are hooded as he glances at Booth, but he leans forward and licks his lips. Booth turns, just a bit, and leans into the wall with one shoulder, softening his stance. "They don't accept you, do they, even though you're one of them?"

"What do y'know about hit?" Suspicious. He looks to Bones and down, at his cuffed wrists.

"Nothing. Everything. I met them. They were arrogant smart-asses who deserve to be taken down a notch or two. Reminded me of my own damn family; that's why I think you should tell Doc Brennan here whatever you think will put them in their place."

Narrowing his eyes, Stratton thinks for a moment, then cocks his chin towards Henson. "You bes with him, hain't you?"

"Yeah,” Booth says. “But he doesn't like me."

Henson snorts and nods.

"Why not?"

"Same reason my church-going, fundamentalist family doesn't like me. I'm a killer."

Stratton shakes his head. "No, no, no, all law bes killers, theys a'trained that way. Theys gonna kill me one day."

Booth stands up. "There's degrees, Stratton. My colleagues and your ... " Booth lets the sentence hang, waiting for Stratton to fill in the blank.

Stratton looks reluctant, but does. "Family. They bes my family, whether they wants me or not."

"My family doesn't want me either, Stratton, believe me. Anyway, my colleagues and your family both kill, right? But they always think it's in defense of something- themselves, or their property, or some justified reason that excuses them. They kill because they have to, not because they want to."

He nods, his lips drawn tight.

"You and I, we're murderers. We like to kill, we enjoy it, and they think that makes us bad and they don't want us."

Stratton's face is open now, his eyes wide and his jaw loose. "You like it?"

"I do. There's nothing else like it, seeing that last moment on a person's face, knowing you took it. It's why I became an Army sniper. These guys," Booth waves at Henson. "... think that makes me dangerous. I'm a liability. I'll never be a part of the club, no matter how hard I work at it."

Stratton swallows and focuses on Bones, takes in her hair and eyes, traces her cheekbones, and watches her lips. Booth's scalp crawls. He can't see Bone's face except as reflected in Stratton's, but she's sitting rigid, her arms and hands carefully folded on the table in front of her. 

"She bes on the swamp, the first one. She looked like you," he says to Bones. "I'm just fourteen, but tall. Daddy caught me a'killing, that first time."

"Simmons Colvin?" she asks.

"Yes. He raised me up. Always said I bes Stratton's, though everybody 'round there could see that weren't so."

"On the swamp?" 

Stratton shakes his head. "From there, from Pembroke, her daddy and mines both brick house Lums, but we all bes on the swamp."

Silence fills the room. Booth runs that sentence through again, before hearing the quiet. It appears Bones and Henson are struggling with the dialect, too. 

"He didn't stop you?" Bones says.

Stratton barks, a sharp report of a laugh. "My daddy? No. I'm ran all the ways over to Raleigh, a'hitching rides, before he caught me up and carried me home. He bes a'wanting me, then. He bes wanting someone kilt. A big frame girl, home from away somewhere. He helped with the killing, I weren't big enough. I'm sometimes think he wanted me caught out, put away early, but when I weren't, he chose the next. He done all the choosing until he died."

"Did you choose then?"

"Yes, but I spread them out more, geographically. And I'm only chose girls. Daddy's list a'disappeared after he died. I'm to the house during the funeral, but it weren't under the loose board and not in his tobacco bin in the barn, neither."

"He had a list?"

"Yes."

What do you mean, you only chose girls?"

"Daddy a'picked boys, sometimes, a'couple of men, too. I'm don't like that so much, though. It weren't nearly so much fun." Stratton grins at Booth and Booth winks at him, hoping Bones doesn't notice. He's got to keep working this line and he already knows walking out of this room with her beside him will be a challenge.

"How many?"

Stratton frowns. "They've askt me that, over and over. I'm forgot."

"Guess," Booth presses.

He smiles slow and shrugs. "I'm forgot of a lot."

"Will you tell us about your victims?" Bones asks. "We're trying to identify them."

"I knows one thing," he says, and stops.

"What's that?" Booth finally says into the void.

"Daddy's all bes kin to a guard."

"A guard."

Stratton looks at his hands, at Booth, at the door. "No matter how hard I'm a'working, no matter everyone knows I'm no Stratton. I bes Colvin, through and through. Not never gonna let me bes guard. Fuck them." 

"A guard?" Booth says again.

Stratton doesn't answer that question, or the next, or the one Henson asks after. Booth shrugs when Bones looks over her shoulder at him. She stands, and Henson follows suit. The door opens and one of Henson's men leans in. Henson waves him in and he comes and stands behind Stratton, one hand on his shoulder. 

"Thank you, Mr. Stratton." Bones' voice is soft.

Stratton stares up at her. Booth can see he wants to say something, but can't decide if he should or not. Bones hesitates, watching him. 

He purses his lips and smiles. "I'll never be part of the club, no matter how hard I work at it," he says, echoing Booth's earlier words in perfect English. It sounds odd in Stratton's heavy Southern accent. He nods, his chin wrinkling, he presses his lips together so hard. He nods again. 

Out in the hallway, Booth says," Cult."

Bones says, "Commune."

 


	13. Chapter 13

 

Back in the Yukon, Bones busies herself on her cell, and Booth thinks while he takes them out into the late afternoon traffic, headed towards the Jeffersonian. He's grateful and a little confused that Bones let his interrogation technique go without comment. She's focused, her brain churning, and although she hasn't looked directly at him, she's not avoiding him, either. She brushed against him coming out the building, and having arrived at the passenger side first, didn't tense against his hand at her back as he opened the Yukon's door for her. 

"Yes, Hodgins, I need to know more about the Lumbee tribe, their social structure in particular," she says. 

"How about we have all unsolved missing persons reports for the past twenty years pulled in Robeson County?" Booth says.

"Thinking most of the victims Henson's unaware of were fellow Lumbees?" she directs at him. "I'm looking for references to guards, or The Guards," she says to Jack.

"Gotta start somewhere."

He calls in the request while Bones uh-huhs into her phone. After his request is confirmed, he has himself transferred to his own voicemail and leaves himself a message to cross-reference the Missing list against his list of the former Lumbee business partners in Douglas Point. Maybe, via Stratton, Simmons Colvin did a little trimming of partner descendants to help Turner win the Douglas Point crown. Any common family names might also give them a lead into the Guard.

After he hangs up, Bones covers her mouthpiece. "Zach says North Carolina is one of the areas they've narrowed skeletal mineral markers to. If Stratton spread out his kills, and included the girls who lived 'away'... is there a way to pull up Lumbee missing persons nation wide?"

"I can find out." His phone rings before he can open it.

"Booth."

"Henson. Stratton's dead."

His thoughts seize up. Booth loses a moment of his life to incomprehension, and then he sees the sea of red lights he's barreling into, and Bones braces a hand on the dash as he hits his brakes hard. "How?"

"Sniper. I've got men out now, can you rendezvous?"

"Yeah, yeah." He flips the phone closed and lights up the Yukon all in one motion.

Bones rolls her eyes at him, questioning, still talking, though.

"Stratton's dead. Sniper in transfer."

She sighs. "Jack, I won't be there, Stratton's been assassinated. Yeah, see you tomorrow."

Booth thinks of Danny Ghilley's face rolling by him on the street that afternoon. He wonders if it's a coincidence that an Army sniper on the FBI's most wanted shows up on the same day a serial killer from his same tribe is assassinated. Fat chance.

***

At ten, Temperance is sitting in Booth's truck, blowing on a coffee. Booth is standing in the headlights, using the hood as a table, pointing things out to another agent. She's here because she insisted, and since the local field office is short staffed due to one crisis and another, Booth hasn't managed to pawn her off on anyone for a ride back to the Jeffersonian.

Agent Henson's team, along with three extra agents including Booth, and four police units, has already canvassed and cleared all the buildings immediately surrounding the murder site. The all points on Ghilley's car turned it up abandoned better than six miles away, stolen plates stripped. The VIN had been sanded so long ago that the spot was just rust. 

Towed for analysis, it would be covered in fifteen years worth of human debris. They'd clear fingerprints, though, and who knew? She'd certainly learned more with less. Remembering Booth's comment, about the FBI techs not as smart as her, a smile rises and tips the corners of her lips. It feels just like sudden sun, like the warm patches she hits walking though the Jeffersonian halls late in the afternoon. 

Booth’s's folding the map now, listening while the other agent speaks. He listens with an intense concentration, his head tilted slightly. Temperance wonders if he has full hearing, if he wore protectors in the Gulf War. Does anyone? He's wearing his body armor, and his sleeves are rolled up. Strong arms. Wrapped around her not even a week ago. She shifts in her seat, re-crosses her ankles the opposite way and sips her coffee. Windchimes! The banging metal. That didn't help his ears any. She wishes she had... done something. 

"She bes on the swamp," Temperance whispers. out loud. She blows on her coffee. The bodies in Bethesda are caucasian, one woman, two men. Being topically caucasian doesn't rule out the possibility that they are also Lumbee. They don't fit Jack Stratton's MO, though, and Zach almost managed to duplicate the apparent crossbow bolt injuries that resulted in death. The tissue on all three was too damaged to be completely sure, and the marks on the bones not distinctive enough to rule out other weapons. And, that was jumping the horse before the cart anyway; they might be any of a number of other ethnic groups that share caucasian traits. 

They needed to be able to work backwards, start with instruments gleaned from a suspect's cache. Were the victims at the Douglas Point cemetery to begin with, or transported there? Was that crime in any way related to she and Booth's kidnapping? Why? Because they were guarding the bones of England's first colonists.

Lumbees guarding Lumbee ancestors. She knows that's what Booth is thinking, though neither has said it out loud, yet. Was Stratton killed because he knew that for a fact? How private could it be among the Lumbee themselves? If Booth's hunch that Danny Ghilley was involved in the shooting was correct, then it was Lumbee against Lumbee. Was anyone on Stratton's side? Did Ghilley know they had spoken to Stratton? 

Booth opens the driver's door.

"Booth! What if Ghilley thinks Stratton told us the secret?"

"What secret?" he says, getting in.

"About Virginia Dare? About the fact that the Lumbees guard their ancestors so zealously that they commit murder?"

Booth nods, both hands on the wheel. "You said there was no way to prove the Virginia Dare theory, even if we had the bones. And we don't."

"No, but that doesn't mean that the Lumbee don't absolutely believe it."

"Or at least, some Lumbees, like the ones that kidnapped us."

"Yes, okay. Let's assume that group consists of Lumbees."

Booth starts the car, and buckles his belt. "And they may or may not play nice with the rest of the tribe."

"Who may or may not play nice back."

The other agent pulls his sedan away from the curb in front of them. At the stop sign a few yards away, he lights up, but leaves his siren off. 

"Where are we going?" Temperance asks, as Booth eases up to the intersection in turn.

"We're re-organizing. I don't think you should go home. You're right, Ghilley may feel like his job's not done if he knows we met with Stratton, but that's a big if. I can probably request a couple of locals for surveillence at the Jeffersonian. We need to know who's in the morgue at Bethesda. Maybe the dentals have hit."

"Jack brought the clothes and personal effects back. He and Zach may have finished going through them. Maybe it'll narrow our search."

Booth flips his emergency lights on. They strobe the dark, illuminating their path. Tempe hopes the lab holds the clue that will light their path through this case.

 


	14. Chapter 14

 

The lab is quiet and dim under the security lighting. Temperance likes it. Maybe she'll get some work done. In her office, she turns on her desk and floor lamps, instead of the overhead, makes tea and rummages for Lorna Doones. Although she picked at Booth's cold chicken and tasted the bread pudding, she never did get a proper meal,. It feels too late to be eating a full dinner anyway. 

Shuffling through the files on her desk, she finds written reports from Zach and Hodgins on the bodies and their effects in Bethesda, along with stills from the video feed and digitals of all the details. Angela has also started files on each, along with files for each of Stratton's victims from the data sent by Drs. Wolff and Caber. She's worked up three sketches so far from the Angelator views, and there's CD's inside each file. They've been busy. Dentals, prints, DNA, surgical markers and broken bones, recovered fabrics and coins and pens, it's all here, waiting to be pieced together by every agency with an acroynm in hopes of a positive identification.

She leans back to check her fax, and there sits Booth's list of reported missing in Robeson County. Under it is a request for help with a scattering of bones found under a building foundation in Manitoba, and another for confirmation of possible human remains found in Florida. She picks up Booth's list, plucks up a highlighter, and scans it for victims of the right age and sex to match the eight Stratton victims. There's twenty-seven possible matches.

Absently, she sips her tea and checks her voice mail. Bingo! One of the Bethesda bodies was identified by the FBI lab on a NCIC hit. They were gathering information and would forward it to Henson ASAP. The fourth message raises the hairs on the back of her neck. 

"Dr. Brennan," says a computer generated male voice. "You will find something of interest in spot DD03. Please proceed there now."

"End of message. To delete this message, please..."

Temperance punches zero and 4 and listens to the message play again. Completely electronic. She hits zero and 1 and finds out it was left at 7:43 that evening, about the same time Stratton was assassinated. She calls the number back. It rings eleven times before someone picks up. She hears the sound of traffic before the receiver thunks back down. Dialing again, she waits through three rings. 

"Hello?" A woman.

"Hi. Can you tell me the location of this phone?"

"Outside the Quik-mart," she says like Tempe should know that already.

"What street?"

"Oh. Um, Crandon Avenue. It's a pay phone."

"Thank you," she says and hangs up. She digs for her phone book, searches for the area codes, and finds out that Crandon Avenue is in Reston. 

Rather than explain repeatedly, Temperance forgoes the phone, grabs a flashlight and gloves and beats it down to Security. She only has to tell her story twice before the third shift supervisor, Doug, has a team of four assembled and they proceed to her reserved parking spot, DD03. She's the only one without a gun, though she's certain she's been shooting longer than two of the guards have been out of middle school.

At the end of the row, they slow, creeping along with guns drawn. Tempe studies the ground ahead of them, looking for anything that shouldn't be there. Several spots away, she can see her car is gone. In its place is a little, white car. She places a hand on Doug's arm. "That's not my car," she whispers. 

He nods, and motions his boys to fan out. They sidestep cautiously, faces tense. 

"Someone inside," says the tall guard.

They all stop, about three spaces away. There's a green mini-van parked in the far side spot, and another white four-door on the side of DD03 closest to them.

Doug points. In a bass rumble, he stage-whispers, "Kenny, Mark, I want you to slowly cross behind and cover it from the far side. Watch for any movement from the vehicle, we've got your back."

The tallest guard and the youngest, creep forward. When they are in position, Temperance, Doug and the remaining guard close the distance. According to the label on the back, the car's a Ford Tempo, Tempe notes. It's dusty and older. There's rust along the bottom door edges, and the black window seals are faded to splotchy brown. There's a man visible through the driver's side window, but his head is tilted back against the seat, like he's sleeping. Temperance flushes cold with adrenaline. She's almost certain he's not sleeping. 

Doug crouches and inspects underneath. "Clear," he says, and then adds, "Of anything obvious, anyway."

He stands and raises his voice, "Sir? Sir! Security. Open your door and step out."

There's no response. 

"Sir? Sir! Please respond if you are able."

After a moment of roaring silence, Doug nods to his partner and slides forward. He peers in through the rear window, then, ducking, through the rear passenger window. He darts his head forward and peeks at the driver. Tempe sees him relax. "He's dead." Doug stands, a thoughtful look crossing his face. "When did that call come in, Dr. Brennan?"

"7:43."

"They're long gone from here, then. Kenny, go upstairs and get the yellow tape, to secure this scene. Locate the owners of these two cars, and that one," he says and points at the cars on either side of the Tempo and a red Camry across the aisle. "Get them moved. We're lucky it's late, otherwise it'd be a zoo. Mark, find Duplin and start reviewing the cameras. Scott, stay on this aisle, keep your eyes open for anything or anyone odd while Dr. Brennan and I coordinate. Don't let anyone enter this aisle, don't let anyone down here." 

While he talks, Temperance inches in near him and peers in at the body. He looks familiar, but he's bloated and grey. There's a circular hole in the center of his forehead, and the back of his head is flattened; his short, blonde, greying hair matted with blood, brain, and skull fragments. The seat's relatively clean, though. 

Male, caucasian, maybe in his forties, though the decomp makes it hard to judge.

The boys scatter. Scott starts checking the smattering of parked cars along the row for staff stickers. 

"Dr. Brennan, I'm calling my boss, Dr. Goodman, and the police, in that order. Please don't touch the car."

"I've got gloves," she says. "I'd like to open the door, Doug, but I won't touch the body."

"No, Dr. Brennan. This car is an unknown, parked in your spot. It could be rigged or anything."

Ah. Okay, he's right. 

"Where is your car parked, Dr. Brennan?"

"It was parked here."

Doug looks grim. He makes that scooping gesture at about her shoulder level that men make when trying to herd women, and ushers her out into the aisle. While he talks to his boss, she dials up Booth, but there's no answer. She leaves a message and then takes the phone from Doug and talks to Goodman at home, trying not to envision him in striped pajamas and failing.

Within twenty minutes, her parking spot is an official crime scene, complete with staff bystanders after they've moved their cars out of the way. One of the two locals Booth requested shows up to add to the chaos. He's assigned to her alone, not part of the official response, so stands exactly eight feet away from her, hands in his pockets. 

She tries Booth again. There's no need to, and she knows he's probably already been re-deployed on the sniper hunt, but she leaves another message. Then she gets caught up in the action, giving a statement while watching the car inspection. They even run a mirror underneath before cautiously opening the doors. Nothing happens. A collective hush falls as everyone breathes and then everything begins happening, all at once. All doors and the trunk are opened, fingerprint dust billows, cameras flash, both CSI's and Jeffersonian security's. The ME's office moves a gurney in.

Temperance details her story and eventually takes someone up to record her voicemail, since it's stored on the Jeffersonian's private system. She can retrieve remotely, but she's not about to share that fact with an investigator and have to jump through cyberhoops to change all her passwords again. When she returns, they are loading the body and Doug shares the info he's gleaned. It's not enough to tell her why she's standing here at one thirty in the morning.

***

Bones looks kinda forlorn, standing off to one side with her hands in her pockets. Not her usual look at all. A cop standing near her notices him and Booth holds up his badge, on a lanyard around his neck, and a finger to his lips. Drawing Bones' attention, the cop meanders off, towards two others standing over the scene. 

Her hair is pulled back and he can feel the warmth rising from her skin as he leans in. "Hey," he says.

She jumps, but Booth manages to catch her elbow mid-strike and placing his other hand on her waist, pulls her back into him. "What? Asleep on your feet?"

"No. Just tired."

"Me, too." He eases his hands to her shoulders, pressing his fingers down as she tries to turn. "Wait." He squeezes experimentally, and then digs the balls of his thumbs into the twin knots along the slopes of her shoulders. "Geesh, Bones, tense a little?"

"My car's gone."

Booth works his way to her neck and runs his thumbs up the corded grooves to the base of her skull. He smiles when she arches her neck, her chin dropping onto her chest. She has a long neck. He runs his fingers firmly down the back of it as he answers her. "That's okay, I found it."

"You did?" He lets her turn then, and watches as she takes in his hair standing on end and the cut on his temple. Her eyes move to the dark stains on his Kevlar vest before coming back to his. 

"I did," he says.

"What happened?"

"Ghilley was driving it."

"So you got him?"

"Not exactly." Booth looks down. It wouldn't do to smile just now.

"Where's my car?"

He fights it down, but he's made her suspicious. He swipes at the soot on his vest. "Reston." 

"Where in Reston?" she says, her voice sharp.

"Uh." When he looks up, her eyes are narrowed. He feels just like a beetle sitting on a board, the pin driving straight at him. "The lake."

"My car's in the lake?" she yells. 

Booth flinches. The CSIs glance up, one rising to his feet in alarm, and Doug spins, hand going to his hip. The cops just grin.

"It's okay," he calls to them. "Look, Bones,” he says, lowering his voice. He goes for serious, but he’s still high from the chase. “Temperance. It's being winched up right this second. But, since it was on fire..." God. She's furious. He winces, trying to keep his lips from curling. "... when it hit the water, I doubt there's much left."

"Booth!"

"C'mon. They don't need you here, do they?" 

"No," she sighs, and wilts, the fight gusting right out of her. 

He waves at the local. "I've got her, I'll call it in."

"The body's been transported,” Bones informs him. “He seemed familiar, but I can't place him. His Georgia license states he's Tad Daniels, but that name doesn't ring an alarm at all."

"A bell, Bones, doesn't ring a bell. C'mon."

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

They hit the beltway just as the clock rolls over to three am. Booth frowns. He's on empty, starving. The first exit offers a twenty-four hour IHOP and he jumps off again.

"Where are we going?"

"You like pancakes, Bones?"

"Sometimes."

Booth rolls into the lot. "We'll get 'em to go." He climbs out, strips off his vest, swipes his hand over the dried blood at his temple, pats at his hair, and claims his FBI windbreaker from the back seat. Nothing he can do about his baggy TAC pants. At least they're black. He does stomp a couple of times, knocking some of the encrusted mud off his boots. As Bones comes around, he slings on his shoulder holster and pulls the jacket on over his black tee to hide it and the gun at his hip. He presents himself. "Okay?"

She laughs and shakes her head.

He shrugs. "Screw it."

He orders blueberry and sausages and she takes buttermilk. He adds two large coffees and a milk. Back in the Yukon, he wraps each sausage in a cake and wolfs them before starting the engine up. She takes the time to butter hers while he drives and gulps his milk.

He lets her eat before directing her through the perfect coffee formula of six creamers and three sugars. She hands it over, along with a look he can't decipher. "Coffee's important, Bones," he says in self-defense. 

"Why was Ghilley driving my car?"

"I don't know, but you're with me, now, until he's at Hoover."

She nods. "He's not in the lake?"

"No. He bailed. Buddy picked him up in a green Ford Taurus and skedaddled."

"Skedaddled?"

"Disappeared faster than fog on a sunny day."

"You don't want to talk about it."

"Nope."

She mixes her own coffee, two creamers and a sugar. She's dwaddling. Her tension laps against him like water.

"What?"

"You don't have a brother, do you?"

Once again, he's completely befuddled. "Y'know, you have this habit of just starting to talk in the middle of some conversation we're not having. What is that?"

"You lied about that scar you have, and you lied today."

He sips his coffee, trying to catch up. He does have a brother, but he doesn't want to talk about it. This is really about his conversation with Stratton. "I lie a lot."

"I've noticed," she says. 

He likes when she's dry, it shows she has a sense of humor, though she hides it well. It makes him want to be anywhere but here, in the Yukon on the way to Reston. It makes him want to bury himself in the back of some dark and leather bar with her and a brace of dry martinis until he's uncovered the real Temperance Brennan. He thinks she might be sexy as hell. He glances over and she's looking into him. Her dark eyes hold his an instant longer than is safe at eighty on the beltway. 

He looks back to the road and sighs. "Yeah, I lied today. It’s my superpower, remember? I'm glad you know that. I hate killing people."

"I know."

"Stratton needed someone who understood him. Serial killers are outsiders, a lot of them keep clippings or books or some sort of research on other killers just to feel a part of something."

She nods. "Community is important in all cultures, and when a community gets too big, as it becomes harder to identify as a group, you get sub-cultures. It's a matter of defining identity. Say you're from San Diego, that's an identity. But you're really from La Jolla. You're a Cal Tech professor-skate boarder-Catholic-fiction writing-Padres-supporter-dad, and every group you associate with sees you slightly differently."

"See?" Booth says, "Coffee's important; you're awake now."

Bones rolls her eyes at him. "Stratton and Ghilley are both Pembroke, North Carolina, Lumbee. But Stratton's interest in serial killing made him a loner. Not accepted as part of his community. At least, not on one level."

"What do you mean?"

"You can give up a sub-culture, learn to be a member of a different community..."

"But there's no giving up your family. He was Lumbee, whether the Lumbees liked it or not. Blood's thicker than water."

They both ponder for a moment, sipping their coffees. "I've never understood that platitude," Bones finally says. "Is water a metaphor for non-familial relationships, or actions taken without... You're still simply assuming Ghilley was Stratton's assassin, did he have time to steal my car?"

"Only if he had help. I think we're back to Lumbee against Lumbee. We're in the middle of a civil war."

"So who's Tad Daniels?" . 

*** 

"Tad Daniels is dead," Agent Henson informs them as they stand lakeside, bathed in flashing emergency lights. Right side tires blown, canted to the side, crumpled and streaked in black, Bone's car is sitting on the grass, draining. Two techs are counting bulletholes and taking notes while the tow truck driver smokes and pretends to be bored.

"Yes, sir," Booth says. "We came from the Jeffersonian."

"No, Booth." Henson, too, sucks on a short cigarette like it's oxygen and blows a long stream of smoke into the dark. Tempe wrinkles her nose. "Tad Daniels of Dalton, Georgia is dead. Ten years ago. Cancer. Your boy appears to be Samuel Lyons. Been investigated for international art theft. Never charged."

"Art theft? Is he a..."

"Lumbee? They're checking. If he is, I'd like to go down to Robeson County and crack some fuckin' heads myself. How he fits in, I've got no fucking idea, but we're taking over the investigation." He scowls at Tempe like she's the problem, flicks his cigarette onto the ground, and grounds it out with the viciousness agents usually reserve for stomping on bad guys. "Driver's got the paperwork, Booth, and there's some stuff the CSI's need signed by Dr. Brennan. I've got three pair out canvassing for Ghilley and DC police on both your apartments. Go home when you're done. We're meeting at the field office at ten am sharp." Henson extends his hand to Temperance. "Dr. Brennan."

After the paperwork's complete, and Tempe's salvaged her waterlogged "Native Cultures of the Amazon Basin" book from the car, along with her ruined CD case, she and Booth trudge back to the Yukon for the drive back to DC. The eastern sky is tinged the slightest of pinks. There's a mist rising from the lake and filling the hollows where Lakeshore Drive dips and curves. The streetlights are still on. There are birds waking up across the lake and a couple of curious joggers slow down as they go by. 

"This sucks, " Booth says, as he pulls out onto the road.

That about sums it up. She wonders if there's a Westin nearby.

"Your place or mine?"

Temperance doesn't have to think hard about that one. "If we're lucky with traffic, we can get to your place by six thirty. That gives you a couple of hours before your meeting. I've got clothes at the lab and Angela can come get me when she comes in." Her head whips around. "Is that Crandon Road?"

Booth cranes his neck. "Yeah. Looks like, why?"

"The call I got telling me to check my parking space originated from a pay phone on Crandon Avenue."

"Could be coincidence."

"Could be."

"Wanta take a drive?" His tone is conspiratorial.

She grins, feeling reckless. "Thought you'd never ask."

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

Six blocks down the waking residential street, a white Toyota sedan matches their pace before passing on the left. It cuts in at a sharp angle inches from the front of the Yukon. The hood dips hard and the anti-locks stick and pop when Booth hits his brakes. Tempe braces against the dash and grabs the hangman handle above her head.

"Shit," Booth says conversationally.

The Toyota keeps rolling, though, at about fifteen. Booth drops back a couple of feet and they watch shadows move in the tinted back window. Booth looks concerned, but not unduly alarmed. Tempe lets go of the hangman. "Kids?" she says, just as Booth reaches under his seat, palms a small pistol and slides it onto her thigh. She covers his hand. The corner of his lips crook up at the contact.

"No," he says and withdraws his hand to key his mike. He holds the handset in his palm, hand on his knee. "Dispatch. 22075. I need back-up on Crandon in Reston, north of Lakeshore less than a mile. I'm boxed. Lead vehicle is a '98, white, Toyota Sentra, no tags. Following vehicle also appears to be a white Toyota Sentra." 

Temperance runs her thumb over the gun to find the safety, makes sure it's locked, transfers the gun to her right hand and chambers a round. Booth nods when he hears it.

There's a bus stop up ahead, with a little plexiglass cover over the bench. The street lamp above it is useless in the mist, just making a yellow splotch, but Temperance thinks there's someone there. "Booth," she says, squinting into the light.

"I see him."

The Toyota in front of them slows and stops at a green light. Tempe keeps her focus on the bus-stop, trusting Booth to decide their best move. He draws the Yukon up beside the shelter. On the bench is a lone, wide-shouldered male in a ball cap, jeans, a light tee and a sleeveless vest, his head bowed, his hands between his knees. He lifts his head and smiles.

"Ghilley," Booth breathes.

They all draw at the same time. Very aware that the barrel of Booth's Sig Sauer nine millimeter is a skinny inch from her ear, Temperance leans hard on her right shoulder, pressing as far into her seat as she can to steady herself. Ghilley has a short, pistol-handed crossbow. He licks his lips and sets it on the ground in slow motion. Standing again, he raises his empty hands and turns around. Three-sixty. But his cronies in the Toyotas probably have weapons drawn, too.

"You got him, Bones?" Booth says. "I'm gonna check the Toyotas."

"Have him."

The barrel of Booth's gun never wavers as he turns to look.

"No weapons showing out the windows. We've all got glass to go through. Roll it down."

"Roll it down?"

"Your window, Bones. And lower your gun."

"I'm not lowering my gun."

Now the Sig wiggles. "I've got him."

"What about the Toyotas?"

"Bones!"

"Okay. Okay." She lowers her gun and hits the power window.

Ghilley is amused. "Hey, Booth, " he drawls, like they've just met at a bar or something. 

Booth is quiet. "Danny. This is Dr. Brennan. You dunked her car in the lake earlier."

Ghilley grins. Deeply tanned with caucasian features and dark, shaggy hair, he's striking. Square jaw and even teeth. A fine scar bisects his right cheek and eyebrow. He notices her follow it up and rubs his brow. "Nice, huh?"

He has that same, competent vibe Booth puts out. They might be brothers, save Ghilley's faint Southern tint. She's guesses they were, in a way. "Actually, yes. That took skill."

"Bones! Working here!"

The Sig reminds her not to turn and glare at him. "Why'd you kill Stratton?" she asks.

Ghilley raises his brows, the one quirks at the scar, and looks past her to Booth. She can only imagine Booth's expression.

"Bones," he complains, exasperation clear.

"Look," Ghilley says, to both of them. "I'm already breaking every rule, but we could play dodgeball all day. I'm just gonna spell it out... shit." He's looking down the street behind them. 

Temperance steals a look at Booth, but Booth's still sighting down his barrel on Ghilley.

In one smooth arc, Ghilley snatches his bow from the ground and launches into motion, Booth tracking him along the Yukon’s hood like an oiled machine. The Toyota's back door pops open, the driver hits the gas, and Ghilley leaps in practiced-perfect form. Hands reach out and grab the seat of his jeans to help him in and they're off. 

The Yukon's tires screech as they spin and Temperance grabs for purchase as Booth takes chase. Hunkered down, Tempe peers back between the seats and sees another black SUV turn left onto a side street at high speed.

"That was fast," she says.

"Is the safety on?" Booth asks.

God, the man's a... a... Great Dane? That wasn't right. Tenacious. Tenacious about certain subjects. Tempe takes the gun from her lap and checks, though, to be sure. "Yes."

The radio crackles, something about the agent in pursuit behind them.

"22075," Booth barks. "In pursuit, Daniel Ghilley, A and D."

She slides into the door as he hauls with both hands on the wheel and corners left onto a four-lane, tires squealing. The Toyota speeds up and turns left two lights down. Booth hits both his flashers and siren and runs the light as it turns red. "Where, where?"

Temperance points as the Toyota turns left and disappears behind a multi-story building of red brick. "There! Left.”

Once on the other side of it though, there's no sign of them. Bumping over railroad tracks a couple of times, Booth cruises past three alleys and two streets and is looking left when the Toyota pops out one alley down and cuts across the Yukon's path. Booth follows, both cars picking up speed again.

"22075. Dispatch. What's your 10-20?"

"Where are we, Bones?"

"Um.." She's looking, but the alleys aren't numbered and she can't see the last street sign anymore. It's a lot lighter, now, but the fog has thickened, moisture condensing on the windows. "Wait. Scottman's Welding," she reads off the long metal building rolling by. "Rice Street."

"Dispatch. 22075 northeast on Rice Street, off Orange."

"22075. Dispatch. 32164 is in pursuit of white Toyota, no tags. Take a right on Delaware, and proceed one-half mile to Nova to barricade."

Booth shakes his head. "Negative. I have lead suspect vehicle in sight, confirmed most wanted inside. Repeat. Danny Ghilley is inside the vehicle I am pursuing."

The radio hisses.

"There were two, right?" Tempe asks. "One in front, one behind?"

"Dispatch. 22893," another voice says. "We are in pursuit of white, Toyota Sentra, no tags, tinted windows, intact, blue, UWM sticker on left back bumper west on Stanton Avenue."

Temperance squints at the blue sticker on the bouncing bumper half a block ahead. "It was, wasn't it? A UMD stcker."

Booth sighs. "Yeah. Fuckin' god damned smart ass."

"All units, GPS shows diverging trajectories. Confirm matching descriptions."

Ghilley's car brakes and swerves onto a narrow, access road that breaks back to the south through a long row of old warehouses. Booth has to three-point turn the Yukon and Ghilley's gone again by the time they're moving in the right direction.

Booth's angry. "Dispatch. 22075. Get me somebody overhead, local, news, whatever."

"Helos are grounded in DC, 22075. Locals are up, but they're gonna see 32164's pursuit, first, and he's trailing their boys."

"I've got Ghilley," Booth yells. He's doing at least forty, Tempe thinks; the Yukon's swaying between unforgiving brick walls, parked cars, and concrete loading docks. No one's standing in the road, but she's catching glimpses of people, men, on the docks and in open doorways.

"I'm trying, Booth," Dispatch yells back. "I've got Henson in my ear, and he's got SAC Santana in his. You're gonna have everybody on you in..." Static. Tempe ducks as Booth hits three metal garbage cans and a lid screeches across the hood and bangs off the windshield. "... forty minutes. Maybe. There's a four car pile-up on the Beltway."

"Fuck."

A fat Mack truck has most of the lane blocked ahead. Bristling like a porcipine with crossbows for quills, the Toyota is at a halt. The Yukon's tires squall and it quivers sideways as it slides into the car. Booth reaches over and shoves her down.The crunch is not as hard as Temperance expects. She even opens her eyes before the Yukon shudders and the engine quits. Booth's got his door open already, gun up.

"Booth," Danny calls, shouting to be heard over the siren. "Here."

He's standing on the loading dock above, half-turned, his crossbow canted down and away. 

"Bones. Stay down. Lock the doors. Call me in on foot."

"Booth," she says, not meaning to be argumentative, but hearing how his name explodes from her lips all the same.

Booth turns his head, turns his back on and attention from Ghilley, and really looks at her. She feels the world fade, actually feels it seep away. Adrenaline, she thinks, a part of her detached. Ever the observer. Still, she can't hear the siren, and sees nothing but the Yukon's blue and red lights flashing across Booth's face and his eyes. His eyes make her hurt they are so full of wanting. 

Booth wants her... to stay down and stay safe and stay alive, but he can't stay and go, too. 

"Use the gun, Bones," he says. She nods and he turns and the siren crashes like a wave, cut off again as his door slams shut. Ghilley’s gone. She hits the safety and the door locks and palms the mic.

***

Breathing in ragged gulps, Booth tries to catch his breath. Danny's around the back of a commercial air unit on the roof of a three-story building. Booth can tell he's still there, because the end of his cross-bow is hovering. Danny's winded, too. Beyond the pounding of blood in his ears, he can hear Danny's panting, and beyond that, sirens. The sirens seem to be everywhere around them, but all distant. Ghilley's crew has made a pretty little mess of foggy Reston this morning. 

They are maybe three miles from where he left Bones in his car, and closer again to the lake, but no closer to a resolution. "What," Booth gasps. He clears his throat and speaks louder. "The fuck, Danny?"

"Hey! Hey, Booth. Remember that night in Mog? That girl?"

An image from his dreams leaps up- looking down the hideous eye of a gun. Her head exploding.

"The dark one, remember?"

Booth straightens, and lays his hot face against the cool concrete of the wall he's leaning on. "They all had dark hair." But he remembered.

"No, no, the one that was dancing when we cleared..."

"Yeah, Danny, the one you wanted to marry." They'd spent nearly fourteen hours up on the roof, only three or so working, though. The rest was waiting, smoking, telling lies. And Danny fantasizing in minute and graphic detail about the girl downstairs, beyond the locked stairwell door. On the way up, they'd checked every apartment. Most were empty, some abandoned. Four or five housed women cooking over open fires and tending children who wove through the women faster than Booth could count and begged favors from the team. 

At one apartment, the door was intact and locked. They could hear music beyond, so they gave a knock and then took care entering when no one came to the door. Squalor bathed in incense. They went back to back, covered the main room and kitchen, a den. One bedroom. The music was loud. Pounding beat. Nine Inch Nails. Booth knew it well. They went through the door so hard, it splintered off the hinges. 

Splendor. Small, richly colored Persian rugs layered and lapped over one another, covering every inch of floor. Floor-length drapes in what appeared to be velvet. No bed, but a stack of pillows in the corner, with scrap cloth for blankets- in every color, pattern, fabric. Fragrant, lit candles, sitting in the spilled wax of others already spent upon the carpets. Her. 

Booth remembered the sheen of silk, how it flowed like something living from the body of the dancing girl, pooling at her feet, and then lashing into the air as she twisted and spun to the music, her eyes closed. The naked girl, the dark girl, nearly ebony. Her palms and soles and nipples and lips glowed. Her eyes were closed.

They crouched, to either side of the door, entranced until Malcolm walked in past them. He stalked by her, obviously she carried no weapon, and cleared the tiny bathroom, before kicking over the pillows and stirring her nest with the barrel of his M-16. He crossed back to the door, managing to avoid her swirling oblivion without a glance. "C'mon, ya'll, main show's upstairs, what you want to do?"

"Fuck," Danny said.

Malcolm laughed. "In your dreams."

And they had retreated, closed the apartment door behind them and taken the roof for an ultimately ditched mission. All was quiet when they worked their way back down. They checked on her, of course, and found her splayed on the pillows, eyes staring into her future, vomit coating her lips and breasts. They blew out two guttering candles, took her battery-powered radio, and left.

Danny was discharged two months after and Booth knew nothing more of him until years later, when he got tangled in the FBI's investigation of Ghilley on a shooting charge. 

"That's the last time I sat on a roof with you, buddy."

"I'm not your buddy, Danny. I'm not your friend. You fucked up." The fog's nearly burnt off. Booth can see a helo to the west, spiraling in the large loops of a search pattern. "You can't escape this. Put down your weapon and step where I can see you."

"I can't." Danny says.

"You can end this right here. Maybe keep your life, if you cooperate."

"I can't, Seeley." Regret laces every word. "Look, this is it. There's a white frame house, right there, across the street. That's where I was supposed to leave Brennan's car, see it?"

"No."

"Look, Seeley, I'm gonna step out, don't shoot me, okay?" 

Booth shifts, balances his weight evenly on both feet and straightens his elbows, leveling the gun in front of his chest. Danny steps out less than fifteen feet away, hands raised, crossbow pointing to the blue sky. He squints into the sun Booth can feel warming his neck.

"Put the weapon down," Booth commands. He tries not to show surprise when Danny does. "Back up."

"I'd never shoot you, Seeley." Danny backs up more than two steps; he keeps going.

Booth frowns and advances on him. 

"C’mon, Seeley, I want to show you this."

When he reaches the crossbow, Booth risks a glance down, making sure he won't accidentally discharge it. He hasn't actually worked with cross-bows much. He kicks it with a sideways shove of his foot so that it slides well away from them. 

Ghilley backs right up to the roof's waist-high parapet, hands still raised. "You need to check that place out," he says, tilting his head. "You'll find some interesting items in there. It's not in Sam Lyons's name, but it's his, you'll find proof of that inside. We left a couple-three marked items for you."

"Why not just phone in a tip?"

Danny laughs, a humorless burst of pent-up frustration. "We have. More than once. Gave the Georgia and North Carolina field offices more information than we've ever given any governmental institution."

"The Bureau?"

"Yes," he spits out. "They told us to file a complaint with the police. We couldn't do that. That'd give away the burial grounds, we wouldn't have a chance to move the rest of the ancestors. But then Stratton... that bastard. "

Booth swallows and steadies his gun. "Douglas Point. Did you kidnap me to move those remains?"

"No." He's emphatic. "Lyons did."

"Did you kill Stratton?"

"He was a traitor. Guard takes care of their own."

"He said he wasn't Guard."

"He wasn't."

But his victims were – they bes kin to a guard, Stratton had said. Got it. The helo's closer, but he doesn't risk checking its location. "Did you kill Lyons?"

Danny turns, and lowers his hands to the top of the wall. He's looking across the way, maybe at the house he wants Booth to see. "Guard takes care of their own," he says with a slight nod.

"Danny," Booth says, and as he hears himself, Booth feels the pain in his gut. This hurts, holding a gun on someone he trusted with his life. It doesn't feel like a long time ago and far away. He can taste the bitter dust of three different continents on the back of his tongue. 

Grit hits his cheek. The helo's arrived, kicking up wind. They should be running for it, eight hundred pounds of gear weighing their asses down. Instead Booth sidesteps, staying ten feet from Ghilley, but moving to where he can see his hands, his profile.

Turning his head, Danny smiles at Booth, a small crooked smile. The helo stays up, high enough that Booth doesn't have to fight to stand. In minutes, cops and agents will be pounding up the staircase. 

"I'm sorry, man," Danny says, just loud enough to carry. "I was dead the minute you saw me in DC. The elders, they changed it up. Put me in Brennan's car, lifted the Toyotas, took what we needed from the house. I was supposed to get you there. Good practice, y'know, letting the Guard actually hump a little action. And no, I'm not gonna explain it to you." 

His smile fades and his eyes go flat. Booth pulls a pound of pressure on the Glock's trigger and waits. 

"You won't never catch the Guard down," he continues, letting his accent thicken. "They bes on the swamp longer than mosquitos. Better shoot me now, Seeley."

The noise of the stairway door banging open is faint under the rush of the helo's rotors, but Booth can feel the energy shift behind him, the men pouring onto the roof and spreading out behind him. He blinks against the sting of dirt and the batter of the wind in his face as the helo shifts above them.

Danny's still got his hands down flat on the wall. He shouts this time. "Seeley! Shoot me or I'm a dead man!"

Stifling the impulse to throw his hands up in exasperation and confusion, Booth rocks back on his heels. The wind catches him and he stumbles against it. The team surges behind him. Booth does put his left hand up, then, in a fist. He wants to control this situation. He's in charge.

"No," he shouts, hoping his voice will carry. "Hold your positions."

Baring his teeth, anger distorts Danny's face. The same face Booth remembers from Survival, covered in mud and blood, the same one he wore roping out of Black Hawks. Anger and fear, but his body doesn't move, his hands stay planted. "Guard’s gonna take me! Shoot me, Booth!"

Booth pulls the trigger. A bullwhip crack shatters the air an instant before his pistol shudders under his hand. His fists pop up with the kickback at the same time that Danny crumples to the roof. In his right peripheral, he sees two agents dive away from their places, and instinctively ducks, belly down. Danny's curled up. Booth looks over his shoulder and sees three or four men crouched, focus blown, their hair blowing, eyes everywhere, looking for the rifle.

He rolls onto his back, catches the fact there's at least two more men to the other side, and four boots hanging out the side of the helo. Hopefully they have the buildings across the street covered. A building beside them goes up another two stories, multiple targets gawking at them. Booth points and two of the team covers the area. The gawkers duck and scurry when they see the guns aimed their way. A cop swings the stairwell door open, pauses and goes through, back down inside. 

Booth flips, crouches, and runs to Ghilley, who grins up at him. Blood drips onto Ghilley's chin from his split lip. "Thanks, man."

The helo moves off. Booth ignores it.

"You could've said, Danny."

"I did! Damn, man, I think you broke my leg," he says. He's white, Booth realizes, and dripping sweat. His eyes roll back and he faints, relaxing into a tangled bloody heap. Too much blood for just a leg wound. 

Booth pushes him over on his back as a cop joins him. "EMT's on the way up, sir," he's saying, and then, "Shit."

Danny's right thigh's spurting bright red arterial blood. Before Booth can, the cop presses down on the gushing break with both his bare hands. He looks sick to his stomach. "Should've put my gloves on before I got outta the car." He's young, blonde. Still has a scattering of dark freckles in a wide band over his nose and cheeks. 

Booth rips off his jacket. "I'm going to lift, don't let off." He gets the jacket sleeves tied around Ghilley's thigh, near the groin, and twists the knot as hard as he can, but he can't really tell if it's helping. He holds what he's got and scans Ghilley's arms and torso. There's a tear in his shirt at his shoulder, a huge scrape on his neck from hitting the parapet wall on the way down, another tear above his right hip, hardly visible under the blood soaking his shirt. "Oh. Damn." 

As Booth watches, blood spreads from underneath Danny; darker, not arterial, it's heavy and slow. A metallic, distinctive tang blooms from it that can't be mistaken for anything else. It's corrupted, tainted by the odor of Danny's destruction. Gut wounds stink. He feels for the small entry wound. "Help me tip him." The exit is massive, half Danny's back is shredded, exposing parts of him that should never meet daylight. 

The cop recoils, and his baby face scrunches up, but he sticks, which earns him Booth's respect.

Vaguely, Booth feels like he should be amazed Danny's breathing, but he's seen worse. He pushes those images away, assesses, tries to decide if there's anything he can do right now that will help. 

"Okay," Booth says, and they let Danny settle. The Guard takes care of their own.

The cop's silent. They both hold what they've got. Booth looks away. 

Above the sirens, the helicoptor's circled to the far side of a tan brick, five or six story office building across the street. The sky's a brilliant, fresh, spring blue and stretches on forever, into summer. A couple of cops and guys in suits are peering over the parapet. Booth knows they are watching for unusual movement, scoping lines of sight, at least one's probably already deploying whoever's on the ground, getting them into the surrounding businesses, shutting the area down as the day's second sniper hunt cranks up. He also feels certain they won't find him, not if he worked with Danny Ghilley. 

The door bangs again and two EMT's appear. They run towards Booth, but help's too late, he already knows that, too. There's gut wounds and fatal gut wounds, not to mention bleeding out. He stands up as they reach him, and that's when Bones steps out onto the roof, shading her eyes against the sun. She starts forward, and he shakes his head, meaning for her to stop, but she doesn't. He sighs, but his heart catches, too, and does a double pump to catch up. God forbid she should ever stop running him over. He meets her halfway.

 


	17. Chapter 17

 

"They never even let me off the roof, Angela. One of Santana's goons showed up and made me repeat what happened in the alley six times, and I corroborated Booth's statements regarding the pursuit, and that was that. They packed me in a car and dropped me here." Slapping her purse down on her office couch, Temperance grabs her lab coat from its hook by the door. "I want to see what's in that house."

Angela grabs the coat, too, and Tempe's hand. "Stop. What you need is a deep breath and a nap."

Irritated, Tempe jerks the coat out of Angels' grip. "What I need is Booth…"

"I knew that six months ago," Angela interrupts.

Tempe's acting childish, but she can't seem to stop herself. She growls and turns on her heel, not caring that the coat whaps Angela as she slings it on. She hears Angela sigh behind her. She doesn't follow Tempe down to the lab.

It's busy today, with at least three different teams working on four reconstructions. Hodgins is huddled with a tech who works for Ogden in Paleo. Zach has started in on a skeleton pulled from the basement, one of several hundred in storage, awaiting ID. She could pull one of the World War veterans, ought to, in fact, or go through Zach and Hodgins findings of the Bethesda remains, but what she really wants is to run her hands over the bones herself. She needs to call her insurance company about her car, and check on getting a copy of the police report. Would they need something from Henson, too? And she should check e-mail and respond to the consulting requests of the past couple of days. She has at least seven reports that need finishing. 

The thought of sitting at her desk makes her feel twitchy. She spends an hour stalking from station to station, helping even where she's not wanted or needed, then blows another forty minutes washing Zach's skull and its mandibles while Zach works on making a wax impression of an unusual indentation in the man's damaged femur.

"Protein bar, sweetie," Angela says, plopping it down in front of her.

"Oh, Angela," Tempe says. "I'm sorry. Zach, can you scan this and send it to Angela?"

"Yes, Dr. Brennan." 

Just a few months ago, she wouldn't have noticed the tension underlying Zach's cordial response. Now it rubs on her like sandpaper. "I'm..." she says. She stops, trying to remember what she's read about co-worker communication. "I'm confident in your abilities, Zach, I just needed... to work." Okay, that was a pathetic attempt. Zach frowns up at her. "I'm just... going to go do some other work," she says. She snatches up the protein bar and retreats, Angela walking beside her.

"You want to go out, tonight? Maybe get some dinner?" Angela asks. "We can make it early."

"Oh! Oh, no. I'm meeting David at seven. I better call him."

"I'll take you home when you're ready, Bren, just let me know. Hodgins is helping me on a project, so I'll be in the bug room."

"Thanks, Angela."

***

"Here," SAC Santana says, thrusting Booth's thirty-eight at him. "Agent Miller will take you home. I want your report on my desk by 8 am tomorrow. I don't want to see that you handed that gun to Dr. Brennan and told her to use it. Henson's working on the warrant to enter the house, but we need more than just your statement of hearsay. We're hearing back that the house isn't a possible location for the sniper, and it's not owned or rented by anyone having anything to do with this fuck-up."

Booth sighs. He's sitting in the backseat of his own somewhat crunched Yukon, Santana standing in the open door, having dismissed the two cops "waiting with" him. His feet feel like they weigh twenty pounds each and there's a sledgehammer working in his head. "Yes, sir. My Glock?"

"You know the drill, Booth; you'll get it back when the lab’s done and I clear it. You shot an unarmed man in front of witnesses. What the fuck do you want me to do? You know what I’ll be doing? I’ll be doing god damned CRD and OIG paperwork for the next six months! You better hope to every higher power available that I can keep this investigation for myself. The state boys are already shouting. Try to stay outta... whatever. And try to stay in the District." He considers Booth, looking disgusted, then adds, "That's an order."

"Yes, sir." 

Santana backs up, slams the door shut, and exchanges words with Miller before Miller comes around and takes over the driver's seat. He twists, eyeing Booth suspiciously. "Seeley."

"Tony," Booth returns in the same tone.

"Keys?"

"Ask Henson," Booth grates. Asshole. Miller climbs back out, leaving Booth alone. Thank you.

He's had his phone in his hand for forty minutes. He finally hits Bones' speed-dial.

"Booth!"

"Hey, Bones." A rush of fatigue sweeps him, makes it hard to draw breath, and now he doesn't feel like talking.

"What did you find?"

"We can't go in. We don't have enough for a warrant."

"Oh."

She sounds so disappointed. For all he knows, Ghilley was just blowing smoke, buying time for his boys to shake their tails and disappear. Time they used wisely. Two of the Toyotas were dumped, the unsubs probably transferring to other vehicles parked at pre-planned locations. They were fast; the pursuit vehicles only lost them for minutes at a time. There's an investigative team headed from the Charlotte field office to Pembroke to start asking around. Their primary objective is to follow up on the missing persons reports filed from within the Lumbee community, but they're also charged with digging for info on the Guard and finding out who's been out of town. Quietly. It seems too much effort to explain right now.

Instead, he says, "Thanks for threatening that truck driver into not moving."

"Oh. You're welcome. He seemed to be more scared of the gun than the crossbows."

Hell, yeah. He'd filed a complaint with Santana over the "crazy agent" who'd shot his left side tires out when he tried to move out of the way of the "crossbow maniacs". Said maniacs then scattered faster than back-up could arrive and follow. "The Toyota's been impounded."

"Good."

Booth closes his eyes on the long silence between them.

"Booth?"

He has to rouse himself to answer. He leans forward and rubs his eyes. "Yeah."

"It's been a long day," she ventures.

"Yeah. Ten o'clock tomorrow? Your office." 'cause he already knows he doesn't want to be in his. "We can go through everything again. Maybe we'll have ID on the bodies at Bethesda. I'll bring everything on Ghilley, and whatever they've got on..." he has to think to recall the name. "... Daniels?"

"Samuel Lyons. Where are you?"

"Headed home. Shower, eat, sleep, not necessarily in that order. Tell me you already did that." If not, maybe a shower would revive him enough to hit Sid's or the Royal Diner with her and fill her in.

"Angela gave me a protein bar," she says, sounding a bit defensive. "And a ride home. I'm having dinner with David."

Just great. 

"Booth?"

"Good," he says. It comes out soft as his throat closes on the word. He tries again. "Good. See you tomorrow." 

He hears her puzzled 'okay' as his flips his phone closed.

*

As Booth opens his apartment door, the aroma that greets him makes him want to cry. Sweet dough is the heaviest scent, floating under sizzling beef, sautéed onion, tomato and a trace of cinnamon. "Hello?" he calls, a bit uncertainly. For one wild second, he thinks it's Bones and then his common sense kicks in. Tess doesn't cook and he hasn't seen her in a couple of months anyway. Sid might, but usually if Sid was gonna cook here, Booth would shop with a list in hand and they'd cook together. No one else has a key. 

"In here, Hueco."

DiDi. Lush, fragrant DiDi, the classic native island girl. Salt and sand, coconut oil and musk. Booth grins, happier than he's been in weeks. He shuts the door and drops his Kevlar on the floor, as she comes out to greet him. He grabs her up in a bear hug. She smells wonderful and feels divine. Sid's cousin is comfort food for his soul; bad for daily consumption but the perfect treat on ripper days like this. "I thought you were in San Juan."

"I am. I just flew up for a few days to see my Mami."

When he sets her down, his hands slide over her shoulders and down her waist of their own accord, the sides of his thumbs brushing the full curves of her breasts. She smiles. The silk of her short robe is cool under his palms. And smooth, no bra or pantyline. As his tired brain registers that tidbit, his body's way ahead of him. "DiDi," he murmurs. "Just what are you doing here?"

Her hands are laced behind his neck, and she leans back in his arms to look up at him. He'd forgotten how dark her eyes were, how pale his skin looks against hers. Her Mami called them chocolate and cream whenever they ate dinner at her place. "A little birdie told Sid you were having a rough day." Her eyes move to the cut on his forehead, and then roam his cheekbones and settle on his lips. His heart speeds up and he licks his lips, only realizing it as she imitates him. 

"Yeah?" he breathes. That doesn't surprise him. 

"Yes, mi peligro. Maybe a bad couple of days and a night thrown in." She shimmies against him and his hands move to her firm, full ass. Ah, he remembers this. God. He presses her against him and watches the pleasure cross her face as she feels him. She closes her eyes and lets her head fall back, her long, sun streaked hair brushing his hands. "He said you were in need of ....companerismo." 

Tangling one hand in her hair, Booth angles her head, stretching her long, long neck taut and kisses it, working his way to her ear. 

"And seeing as how I'm currently between companeros..." 

He kisses her into silence. Her mouth is hot, her tongue fierce, she makes his head spin.

She's tugging at his shirt. He breaks the kiss and tries to pull it off, but he's still got his shoulder holster on. "Fuck."

"Lo olvidar," she says. Forget it. She captures one of his hands and pulls it roughly to her breast, arching into him when he squeezes. She kisses him, devours him, takes care of his belt buckle and zipper, pushes and pulls and bites him. 

He picks her up, and god, wrapping her bare legs around him, she's right there, so hot. Wet for him. He stumbles back, searching, desperate, and finds the door, slams her against it and him at the same time. She talks. He's not listening, except to her tone, urging him on, mi dios, Hueco, mi amor, her gasps, the way her nipples harden against his tongue and her muscles tighten under his onslaught until she's wild, hard to hold as her heels slip for purchase. 

He steps back, takes them down right there, and finishes it.

*** 

Tempe's showered and dressed in a black Donna Karin pants suit, which is light and loose. Too comfortable. She’s regretting her decision to keep her date tonight when the doorbell rings. She sighs, swipes the brush through her blown-dry hair, and goes to answer it.

Her hand's on the knob when she thinks to check it's actually David at her door, since her police surveillance was cancelled after Ghilley died. She peers through the peephole, but it's covered. "Who is it?" she says.

No answer. The bell peals again. "Who is it?" she says again, louder.

There's a shuffle, something clunks against the door, and someone curses, but the voice is so muffled, she can't tell male or female, let alone who it is. "It's me, Temperance," comes a voice. Booth.

"Booth," she says, as she unlocks the deadbolt and opens the door. "I can't believe you tell me not to open... David!"

He looks overwhelmed, juggling two overloaded paper grocery bags and with a tiny, folded over Godiva bag hanging from his lips. He raises his brows and takes a tentative step forward. 

"David," Tempe says, a little more graciously, "Come on in, here, let me help." She takes one of the grocery bags and backs out of the way.

He rescues the Godiva bag with his free hand, stepping past her. 

"Through there," she says, pointing him to the kitchen.

"Are you expecting Agent Booth?"

"No, no, he just has this thing... about the door. Never mind." She waves him on and follows. "Are we going out?"

"I know you must be tired, Temperance. I thought, if it's okay, I could cook for you instead."

She's almost giddy at the thought of crashing on her own couch with a glass of wine. "That's...” What would Angela say? She draws a blank. What would Kathy Reichs say? “Fine with me, David, thank you." She puts her bag on the counter next to his, and he reaches out to touch her hand. 

"Temperance." 

When she looks up, he steps closer, so they're face to face.

"I know we haven't known each other very long, but I was really worried about you. Angela told me you were missing, and the news ran stories about the search, but they were pretty bare bones on facts. I guess the Bureau does a good job of hitting the mute button."

"The mute button?"

"Keeping things quiet. Anyway, I'm glad you're safe." He leans in and kisses her, before she's registered he's going to, but his lips are soft and he's undemanding. And he smells good. She deepens the kiss, feeling surprise ripple through him. He draws her in and touches her cheek, sweeping her hair back over her ear, before she pulls back. 

He looks stunned, which makes her laugh.

"You're beautiful," he says.

"So are you. What's for dinner?" She peeks in the bag, and starts unpacking.

"Salmon, mashed potatoes, and asparagus."

"Really? What's the cottage cheese for?"

"Secret ingredient. I brought wine, too. I remember you like Merlot?" He pulls out a bottle of Renwood with the flourish of a magician.

"I love Renwood, it's hard to find."

"You're familiar with it?"

"It's an excellant wine. Great vintners practice a chemical art that can't be taught, it has to be nurtured. The best conjure layers of flavor retained from the growing field." She opens a drawer and hands him her favorite olivewood corkscrew. "You can taste that season's weather, if you know how."

David takes the corkscrew and her waist and kisses her again. "I think I love you, Temperance Brennan. You have music?"

"I do."

"Where are the glasses?"

Temperance wonders if anyone will ever ask that question again without her seeing Booth on fire. She brushes her lips to David's again, tamping down the image of Booth on air guitar. She'll put on jazz. Something classic, something light. "I'll get the glasses," she says.

***

On his back, Seeley's sweat-slicked and wrung out. After a few minutes, DiDi raises her head from his shoulder and he lifts his arm to let her up. She grins at him. "Hueco, I wish you weren't so hard to live with. I wish I'd been the one to fill you up."

He tilts his head, and gives her a half-smile. He'd tackle her back down and make her forget that aspect of their complicated history but he's too exhausted. 

"Cerveza? I'll bring it to you in the shower."

It's dark. He wants to lay right here for three days, but nods and struggles up. She unlaces his boots, bless her, and tugs them off. He stands, pulling his pants up, but doesn't bother with the zipper. Her fingers are already at his shoulder holster, working the buckle. She slings it over her arm and helps him work his wet tee off, then hands him both and gives him a kick towards the bedroom. "Don't lay down, Hueco."

The bed's inviting, but Seeley's starving. Between his carnal and culinary appetites, DiDi's going to think he's still her Hueco Cazador, the hollow hunter she tried to tame and satisfy at a time in his life when he did nothing but roam and kill. But the truth is, he's not any more, despite the fact that he just laid her out inside his front door. 

Flipping on the light, he looks at his room like she might, seeing it for the first time. He sees real furniture. Dark wood. Not just a mattress, but a boxspring, too, and an honest to heaven real bed to put them on. A dresser with a real lamp and the minutia of an every-day life. He owns bookshelves, with books. A leather chair, draped with ties. Yeah, there's three boxes of ammo and a pistol lock on it, but that's just his reality.

He stalks into the bathroom, runs the hot water and strips. He's got plants, for god's sake. He grabs a clean towel, and notices Parker's little hand print on the wall. It's a plaster cast, hung on a ribbon, a Father's Day gift. Seeley raises his hand and traces Parker's three-year-old fingers, then spreads his hand flat, his knuckles bowing into the indentations of Parker's three-year old fingertips. So little. Already, Parker’s bigger than this. There's blood on his hand. When he snatches it back, he's left blood on the cast.

"Hueco, are you bleeding?"

He's staring at the cast. He can't wash it, it'll dissolve.

"Hueco."

"It's not mine." He'll let it dry, maybe he can dab it off, or sand it a little, or paint over it. When he turns around, DiDi is staring at her chest, her robe open. Blood streaks her breasts and belly, her arms and across her neck. "Oh. Oh, DiDi, I'm sorry, I didn't realize how much... it dried. It's not mine."

A line forms between her eyes in slow motion. "Whose blood is it?"

"Somebody else's," he says and slides her robe off. The water's steaming and they're going run out if they don't get in. "C'mon."

Imitating a rock, she glares at him. "Who's blood?"

He scoops her up and deposits her in the shower. "Somebody who used to be a friend."

"Oh, Hueco."

They only eat because the water runs cold and the bed's too wet to sleep in.

***

"That was utterly delicious," Temperance sighs. She spins her wine glass, watching David from under her lashes. She wasn't sure, when she was dressing, that she might not sleep through dinner, but now she's wide-awake. David is entertaining, with a ready smile and a clever mind. He's traveled some, but in such a vastly different way than she has, that she could compare experiences with him all night.

"You travel for pleasure," she says into the pause of their conversation.

"I do."

"You cook for pleasure."

"I do."

Tempe travels for science and cooks for food. She watches the twirl of her glass. Light spins off the crystal from the white tapers she lit and she remembers Booth's expression under the Yukon’s flashing red and blue lights, his intensity. 

David stretches, like a well-fed cat, and picks up his plate. He comes around to collect hers, and as she looks up at him, she wonders why not. "What else do you do for pleasure?"

He sets his plate on top of hers and takes her hand as she stands. The music's soft, Miles Davis, and he spins her, before tucking her in close to him. "Do you really want to know?" he whispers.

She nods.

"I take forensic anthropologists to places they've never been before."

"Promise?" 

They only sleep because by two am? Tempe can't keep her eyes open one second longer.

 


	18. Chapter 18

 

The morning’s going, but that’s about all the progress Tempe can say she’s made. She’s been over the files on the bodies in Bethesda again and run through her inbox and email, jotting notes, scheduling further calls on a couple of questionable remains. The bulk of her morning is spent on working through her file backlog- chasing down lab results, confirming a pathologist’s conclusions from crime scene photos taken of a decade old Hawaiian torture burial, and tucking in loose ends from her unscheduled ten days of captivity and de-briefing. She’s brought bills from home that have to be paid as well, if she can get ten minutes online.

Booth calls at a quarter ‘til ten and cancels. He’s brusque, but apologizes before he lets her go. Cullen wants him in the office until his initial shooting review meeting wraps up. Booth’s not in on it, but it’s this meeting that will decide who heads up the investigation. With proper steering, SAC Santana will be in charge, and not the Inspector General’s office. From Booth’s tone, she deducts that’s a good thing.

When David calls at eleven fifteen, asking about his watch, it’s such a relief that she asks him to lunch. And when he says where, she says Wong Fu’s without thinking it through.

Angela comes to her door at noon, purse in hand. “Hey, Brennan, we’re doing lunch, wanta come?”

“No, Ang, thanks, I’m meeting David.”

“Ah. Dinner and lunch in one twenty-four hour period.” She nods. “So, you two are getting along, I guess.”

“He left something at my place last night, I’m just returning it.”

“Well, that dinner sounded spectacular. Have fun at lunch, sweetie, maybe some afternoon delight.”

“No drinks for me, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Angela laughs and shakes her head.

“Afternoon… oh.”

“Bye, Bren,” Ang says and sidles out.

“It’s just lunch,” Tempe calls after her. She closes the file she’s finished and looks at the stack. There’s ten or twelve left. She can do one more before she leaves.

***

Booth groans when he enters Wong Fu’s and sees the squints at their usual places. He sketches a wave and trudges to the bar, pulling his power tie loose on the way. Sid smiles and shakes his head. 

“Something on draft,” Booth says, shedding his suit coat.

“Really?”

“Administrative leave,” Booth spits.

Sid draws something dark for him and leaves him alone.

Clean-scented hair brushes his shoulder as Angela sits down next to him.

“Angela.”

“Booth.”

“What’s up,” Booth says and sips his beer. 

“Brennan’s meeting David for lunch.”

“And I care because…”

“I just thought you might think she was joining us. But she’s not.”

Booth has nothing to say. He can’t decipher how he feels, but can’t deny a twinge of disappointment.

“Administrative leave, huh?”

“Yep.”

“What’s that mean, anyway?”

“I get paid to stay out of the way.”

Angela snorts, which makes Booth want to smile. 

Looking into his beer, he keeps it inside and tries to maintain his pissiness, but then she says, “Yeah, right,” just as he swallows.

Choking, Booth coughs and coughs while Ang whacks him on the back. “Yeah,” he says, and coughs again. “Right.” 

He grins at her and nods, taking another gulp of beer to wet his scratchy throat. “Right.”

“My work here is done,” Angela announces and retreats.

Booth shakes his head as Sid puts heavily-seasoned chicken, brown rice and sautéed greens down in front of him. The combination has an odd odor but Booth’s stomach rumbles and his mouth waters even though he’d have sworn he wasn’t in the least bit hungry.

“Coconut curry,” Sid says, looking after Angela. His lips quirk.

“Pop rocks and Pepsi,” Booth counters, shaking salt onto the chicken.

Sid grabs Booth’s hand on a down shake and none too gently takes the salt. “You haven’t even tasted it,” he grouches.

Booth slides a glance towards the squints. “Don’t plan to.”

Sid grunts and takes the salt back with him to the kitchen. Booth picks up the pepper.

***

Just as Tempe decides to go on in, David comes trotting around the corner, looking crisp and cool, despite his hurry, in jeans and a yellow polo.

“I’m late, I’m sorry,” he pants. “I lost track of time.”

“Having your watch should help,” Temperance says, holding it out to him.

“No excuses,” David says, pulling the door open for her. “I still have my cell.”

“What would we do without a constant umbilical to the world clock?”

“Live naked and free?”

Tempe laughs up at him. “Sounds like a theory that requires testing.”

David stops. “Tempe.”

She turns back just as she reaches the threshold into the main room. “Yes?”

He crooks a finger at her, and feeling flirty and light, she takes the step back to him. He reaches up and pulls her ponytail out, pocketing the hair band. He runs his fingers under her hair and massages the back of her head. Her eyes close, but she feels his soft breath brush her face as he leans in, so she’s ready for his kiss. His fingers trail along her jawbone as he draws away.

“Thank you, Tempe.”

She nods. “I like you, David.”

His eyes are guileless. They’re kind of pretty, a dark walnut brown, but with little teeny flecks of green and gold cascading down into a darker ring flaring around his pupil. She doesn’t get to study bright, living eyes much. David blinks and smiles and the corners of his eyes crinkle. “They’re brown,” he says.

Flustered isn’t a sensation Tempe’s used to, her cheeks flush. Why is Wong Fu’s foyer so warm? “We should, um, eat. Now.”

She’s two steps into the crowded restaurant before she sees Booth at the bar and her team at their usual table. Hodgins is waving his hands, engrossed in some story, but Angela waves at her, and Zach twists around, interrupting Hodgins, who shifts in mid-motion to wave her over.

“Somebody you know?” David asks.

“Yes. They work with me at the Jeffersonian.”

“Ah. The Squints.”

“Only Booth calls us that.”

“You said it online.”

Did she? Surely not. “I wouldn’t have. I didn’t.”

“Let me think… my squints are the best forensics team ever assembled… verbatim, of course.” He’s laughing at her, hands in his pocket as she hesitates. He nods in Booth’s direction. “Isn't that…”

She sighs. “Yes. We missed our meeting today. I didn’t know they’d all be here.”

“Look, you’re swamped today, and I’m already running late… “

“No, David, we can sit over… “ She scans the room, but there aren't any tables available. There are several bar chairs open to either side of Booth, though. It’s that wall of energy he’s exuding, creating a keep away zone. She frowns at his back. Then she sees he’s watching them in the mirror.

“Just introduce me, because I do want to meet them, y’know, but I’ll grab a bite on the way to work.”

She narrows her eyes at Booth. He widens his in response and then shrugs. 

“Tempe?”

“Yes, David, of course,” she says, looking up. He offers his arm, and she takes it. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe dinner on Saturday?” he says, steering them across the room.

“I’ll call you.” 

***

In the mirror, Booth watches David get introduced around. He feels no inclination to get up, but does makes a point of turning on his stool to exchange nods with David as he leaves without ordering. The squints are digging in and Bones is talking to Sid. Making up his mind, Booth goes to join them.

“Move over,” he says to Angela, which puts him directly across from Temperance. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair windblown. He wonders where she parked. 

“Hey,” she says, just to him.

“Hey.” Her lips are full and it occurs to him that she’s been thoroughly kissed. His heart squeezes, which pisses him off.

“Did your Shooting Review go as planned?”

Booth sips his beer, determined not to let his irritation at her surface. He tilts his head, considering his answer. “Santana’s in charge.”

“That’s good.”

“They put him on Administrative Leave, Bren,” Angela pipes up.

Booth bites his tongue, but he does elbow Angela’s ribs. 

“Ow,” she says.

Bones just looks at him. He shakes his head. “It’s okay, Bones. Standard proced…”

“Hueco!” DiDi says, laying a hand on his shoulder. Shit.

Of its own volition, his arm opens to her yielding warmth, and she sinks down onto his lap, placing a chaste kiss upon his forehead. “What are you doing here?” he murmurs.

“I’m leaving tonight, Hueco. I had to come see Sid. Are these your friends?”

He nods, and introduces her as Angela slides over to make room, fetching up against Jack, who grins at Booth in appreciation, like Booth planned it. DiDi has the good grace to settle on the leather banquette instead of him, though he has no choice but to leave his arm around her.

Bones, of course, on introduction, runs off into much more fluent Spanish than Booth has ever been capable of, and he hears Hueco and Hueco Cazador, along with other terms he doesn’t particularly like hearing without knowing the context. He does catch that DiDi has only referred to him as an old friend and they talk about Sid for a few minutes, and about life on islands.

He also notices that both Angela and Jack are listening intently, but Zach looks bored. And hungry. He’s eating steadily, though his eyes continually bounce from Booth to DiDi to Bones in earnest appraisal.

“Okay,” Booth says, tightening his grip on DiDi when he hears the name of a popular casino resort that does not engender fond memories. “Maybe we could speak English?”

DiDi laughs and slaps his chest. “Why? Do you still owe them, Hueco?”

Sid saves him, sliding a plate of chicken rolls and Chinese salad in front of Bones and catching DiDi up in a big hug. “Booth, you hitting on my girl, again?” he says, hanging onto her.

“Always. She makes better sancocho than you do.”

“I’m hurt,” Sid says to Booth, and to the squints, “He’s a liar, always has been,” and then to Didi, “You’re gonna be late, DiDi. Ronnie’s waiting for you out back; your bags are already in the trunk. You got Booth’s key? I want it back.”

Booth closes his eyes for a second, trying not to react, willing the tension from his features. He peeks towards the squints, but only Angela is looking back in speculation. The others are focused on the DiDi and Sid Show as DiDi digs his key from her hip pocket and hands it over, saying, “You better feed him better, Sid, look how skinny he is…” 

And now they’re all looking at him, but before he can speak, DiDi leans over, one hand soft on his neck, and kisses him. 

Her thumb strokes his jaw and although the squints are watching, maybe because they’re watching, maybe because Bones can sit there smiling at him with her kiss-bruised lips, he deepens the kiss. 

DiDi breaks it, breathes “Hueco” into his mouth and sadness sweeps over him. He’s a bastard. And this is the last time he’ll ever kiss her. She straightens and he follows her up, standing so he can wrap his arms around her. Her hands press against his chest. He captures her mouth again, a small kiss. 

“Bye, Seeley,” she whispers.

 


	19. Chapter 19

 

Temperance frowns, not understanding the irritation that’s descended on her in a single heartbeat. 

Booth nods and lets DiDi go. Sid sweeps her away, her hand tucked in his. Hands in his pockets, back tense, Booth watches them thread through the tables and out the swinging kitchen door. He sighs. 

Hodgins is the first to break the silence. "Puerto Rican girls are hot, if you're still taking notes, Zach."

"She's Dominican," Booth says in that mild tone Tempe’s learned means trouble.

"And she thinks Booth's hot," Angela says. She's annoyed, too, but Temperance doesn't know why. So Sid's cousin nearly poured herself in Booth's lap and that kiss, though brief, seemed to mean more than Temperance can fathom. But they're old friends and Booth's a toucher. After all, he always seems to have a hand on her.

"Who doesn't?" Zach says.

The tension dissipates as Angela and Hodgins laugh and Zach tries to look innocent. Booth grins as he sits back down. Temperance doesn’t feel better, just more irritated because she doesn't get the humor in that rejoinder.

“Are you going to eat that?” Jack says, spearing a chunk of something from Angela’s plate. Zach leans over and joins them in their bickering. Temperance stares down at her own food.

"What's wrong?" Booth says, his voice low. He crosses his arms on the table, leaning forward so that his elbows nearly bump her plate.

Everything. Everything is wrong. From the bodies at Bethesda to watching Booth kiss a gorgeous island girl. She sets down her fork and picks the answer that makes sense. "This whole case, Booth. It's... it's wrong. It's frustrating."

"Welcome to my world," he says and has the nerve to laugh. 

She hits him on the upper arm.

"Ow," he says and rubs it. "It's not even my case, Bones. I spent all morning getting dressed down for interfering, although I was both invited to join and I keep getting engaged through no fault of my own. I didn't asked to be kidnapped. I didn't ask to spot Ghilley.” 

He looks away, towards the bar. Tempe becomes aware of the noise in the room, everyone trying to talk above the background music. She almost misses his next words.

“I didn't ask to kill him."

"You didn't kill him, Booth."

"I did,” he says, sitting up, pulling away from her. “I should've shot him sooner. Cullen literally threw a book at me when I said that, but it's true. Santana's pissed. Henson's having a cow. There's no concrete proof Ghilley killed Stratton, especially since he may have been shot with the same weapon. There's no proof he's connected to our abduction. The only proof the victims at Bethesda weren't killed by Stratton is that the MO's different. Shit, there's no physical evidence linking Stratton to his own confessed murders. And god only knows how the hell Samuel Lyons fits in."

"Ghilley stole my car."

"Well, he was driving it, anyway. A good defense lawyer..."

Ghilley wouldn't be needing a lawyer ever again, but Booth's right. Unless ballistics link Stratton and Ghilley, there's only Booth's word to connect them. "Could it be coincidence?"

“Yes,” Hodgins says. Temperance jumps, startled. Booth looks startled, too, but he covers it better, turning slightly to include the others in their conversation. 

“But that's as improbable as the fact that there's so many Lumbees involved," Hodgins continues.

"Okay," Booth says. "Let's count them down starting at the beginning. One, Stratton is a Lumbee."

"Two, Douglas Point is owned by a Lumbee," Hodgins says.

"No," Angela says. "It was owned by a Lumbee, Stratton's dad, right? A rock place owns it now."

"Mayport Rock bought it from Stratton's brother, Turner Colvin," Booth clarifies.

"You don't know," Hodgins says.

"Know what?"

"I thought... never mind. Yesterday morning I ran the soil and rock samples we brought back from Bethesda. I found the spore of a really cool, really endangered nematode, an analid."

"Analid?" Booth says.

"Roundworm," Zach says, joining them.

Booth makes his "whatever, scientists suck" high school face and waves his hand. Temperance interprets that to mean “move on”, and after a second, Hodgins does.

"Anyway, I want to make a population survey, but I need to cover a pretty wide area to make it statistically meaningful, which means bigger than the dig site. So I start poking around, trying to find out who at Mayport Rock can give me permission to sample the rest of Douglas Point."

They all look at him expectantly, while he looks like the fat canary. 

Booth rolls his eyes and gives in. "And?"

"The document you saw was drawn up in hopes they could negotiate with Turner Colvin to buy the land. All they actually purchased is the mineral rights."

"Henson's investigators confirmed my information," Booth says. He slaps one hand flat on the table. "Son of a bitch!" 

Two older women next to them gasp and flutter, but one of the waitresses is right there and distracts them. Booth doesn’t seem to notice.

Temperance closes her eyes for a moment, trying to let her brain work. "The land wasn't sold, that's why the Lumbees didn't move the cemetery earlier."

"And Colvin could have it designated," Zach says. "If it had been designated, the FBI wouldn't have been allowed to remove any remains aside from Stratton's probable victims. They wouldn't have to be examined and repatriated, and access to the site could've been written into future land deeds. Any accidental removals that proved not related to Stratton could immediately be returned to the site."

"Zach?" Booth says.

"Yes, Agent Booth?"

"Why do you know that, Zach?" Hodgins says.

"My family has a two acre cemetery with a deeded access. It's on a horse farm down the road from us, right next to the riding ring. Technically, it's open to the public. Any one can go visit, but only family can claim a spot." 

"Okay, okay..." Booth is staring into space, his thumb beating a fast rhythm on the table top.

"One, Stratton is a Lumbee," Booth says again.

"Two," Hodgins says. "Douglas Point is owned by a Lumbee."

"Three, the cemetery contained Lumbee remains."

"Wait," Temperance says. "We don't know that. Stratton said it was his birthright to know who was buried there, and a Lumbee group has owned the land since the estimated age of the remains located there, but all I could tell was that the remains were of both Europeans and Native Americans. And since they're gone, we can't even conclusively verify that."

"All right, scratch that. Three…" Booth continues.

"You were kidnapped by Lumbees," Angela says.

"No," Temperance and Booth say at the same time. 

"We can't prove that," Booth points out.

"Circumstantially, it's pretty clear, though it may have been an extremist group," says Hodgins.

"The Guard," Booth says. 

"The Guard?"

Temperance pushes her mostly uneaten lunch towards the center of the table and explains. "Both Stratton and Ghilley mentioned the Guard in terms of an exclusive group within the Lumbee sub-culture, possibly empowered to protect the most basic of Lumbee precepts; their culture, their mores, their rights within the larger American political and cultural structure."

"They work below the radar." Hodgins nods. His tone is one of admiration. "Protecting themselves against the European invaders."

"You mean like insurgents?" Zach says.

"Um." Booth says, sounding offended. He frowns at Zach. "No."

"No, Zach," Angela says, "After all, Booth's still here; they killed Ghilley. Who was a Lumbee, too."

"We don't know who killed Ghilley," Booth snaps. "But yes, Ghilley was a Lumbee."

"For sure?" Hodgins says.

"Yes."

"Okay, so you only have three Lumbees involved; Stratton and his brother and Ghilley."

Booth grimaces. “And Stratton and Ghilley are dead. And Lyons, if he’s Lumbee. Somebody from the New York field office is interviewing Turner Colvin today.”

"Stratton's victims?" Angela asks.

"I don’t know. Seven remains recovered, plus the three from Douglas Point that are definitely not his. Four identified, but we don’t know if they have Lumbee connections. The rest are awaiting forensic confirmation. Henson’s got investigators in Robeson County now, culling the missing person’s reports and collecting dental and surgery records for the ones that are close." 

Temperance wishes she could line everyone up in the lab for long enough to determine all the connections. “Ghilley was a Guard. He told you Lyons kidnapped us,” she says, looking at Booth. 

“And circumstantially,” Hodgins says. “The Guard abducted you. That means Lyons is Guard.” 

“Okay,” Booth huffs. “If one equals four and four equals ten, then ten equals one.”

"Lumbees killing Lumbees," Zach muses. He eyes Tempe’s chicken rolls and gives her a questioning look. She shrugs and he plucks one off the plate and dips it in his own leftover sauce. "What if... what if you only think it's a civil war because everyone looks like Puerto Ricans?"

Hodgins snorts. "Zach, buddy, what’s in that dipping sauce?"

"I thought DiDi was Puerto Rican because I heard her say San Juan, but Booth says she’s Dominican."

Ah, Temperance thinks.

Booth says, "What?" at the same time Hodgins slaps Zach on the back. 

"You're a genius, man!" Hodgins says.

"I know," Zach says without ego.

"Interesting, Zach," Tempe allows, thinking it through. 

"What's so interesting?" Booth says.

Angela grins. "It's a geek thing, Booth, you have to wait it out."

"Remember the old westerns?" Hodgins says. "When the white guys played Indians and it was all waaay over the top?"

"I gotcha," Booth says. “The Lumbees don’t look like Indians.”

Everyone thinks for a moment. Booth crosses his arms over his chest and stretches his legs out, bumping Tempe. She gives him two inches, but no more. His calf is warm and solid against hers. Tempe claims one of her own chicken rolls. 

“If all Mayport Rock owns is the mineral rights, the Lumbees don't have a fight with Turner Colvin,” Booth says, looking at the table. “Colvin could probably have the cemetery designated at any point, if not as Lumbee, then he could claim it as a family plot, since he's got title from way back.”

"There's no reason to move the remains,” Temperance says, licking crumbs off the corners of her lips. "But then Stratton confesses and now they become public knowledge. In addition, the ancestral remains are revealed to be commingled with Stratton's victims, along with three more recent murders. No matter what, the remains are getting moved to government storage for at least a little while."

"And no matter who screams about it," adds Hodgins.

"But that's okay," says Booth. "The ones who don’t belong get sorted out by the crime lab at no cost and Colvin can claim the old remains personally as members of his family cemetery. Since there’s no markers, everyone can claim ignorance as far as individual identity, so that’s not an obstacle. After all, the bones are old. Records get lost. No custody battle, no tribal identity process, no delay in repatriation. No motive."

"So, if the Lumbees didn't kidnap you and steal the remains…" Angela says.

"Somebody else did. Someone who wanted us to think they were Lumbees…" Temperance starts.

Booth finishes her sentence. "The crossbows, the masks, the torches."

"The simple food, the wooden bowls, the muted colors."

"The attempt at dialect. Henson said it was Coastal native, that old-fashioned phrasing my guard used." Booth shakes his head. "I should have seen right through it."

Hodgins scratches his goatee. "Only one reason someone would want old Indian bone."

"To sell it?" Angela says.

"Damn," Booth mutters. "Samuel Lyons was an antiquities dealer."

"The Lumbees aren't even recognized as a tribe though. Why would anyone go to all that trouble to steal them?" Zach sounds truly puzzled.

"Because," says Temperance. "They weren't after the Native American bones, though that was probably a plus. They are, unquestionably, mid-seventeenth century Native American remains, and valuable on the collector’s market. With proper analysis of the collected artifacts, they could probably be tribally identified. If the Lumbees are correct, they’re Croatans or maybe Cheraws, but I doubt you could really narrow it down any further than Cherokee.” 

They all wait. Temperance looks back at them.

“Bren, honey,” Angela prompts. “If they weren’t after the Indians, what were they after?”

Booth grunts. “You’ve got to be kidding. The Europeans.”

Temperance beams. Why Booth’s answer should make her cheerful, she has no idea. “In particular, the female child's remains."

"Oh, my god," Hodgins says, his eyes wide. "Do you really believe that? The bones of Virginia Dare?"

Temperance shakes her head. "It can't be proven."

Booth’s cell vibrates. He tugs it loose and checks the caller ID. “Cullen,” he says, like the name tastes sour, and answers it. “Booth.”

He scrambles up and walks towards Wong Fu's entrance, seeking quiet, one hand on the phone, the other blocking his free ear. 

Tempe watches him go, wishing he could take charge of the case. Cases. Right now Henson has the serial murder case, and the investigations into the unrelated murders at Douglas Point, and Samuel Lyons's death; Macnamara, the Stratton and Ghilley sniper cases; and Agent Butler, their abduction case- with Booth as a loose thread running through all six. “It’s all just theory and assumptions,” she says, turning back to her team. “We need facts. Are Ghilley and Stratton and Lyons really connected? Are they at all connected to the contemporary Douglas Point victims at Bethesda or is that something else altogether?”

“Gotta go, I’ve still got samples running, a couple on the Bethesda guys, and a couple for Kwong,” Hodgins informs her as he drops a twenty on the table.

“And I’ve got that man from Limbo,” Zach says. “I’m almost ready to run everything through the databases.”

Booth’s out in the front entryway, pacing. He disappears to the left. 

“Hey, Ang?” Tempe says, digging out her own cash. Booth reappears heading right. “There should be a picture of Samuel Lyons on my fax, I requested it this morning. Will you scan it? I want to see Lyons in the masks I described to you… I think…”

And Booth reappears headed left. He’s nodding, vigorously, and rubbing the back of his head.

“… maybe he was Mr. Beech.”

“Sure, Bren, where are you going to be?”

“I think I’m gonna be with…”

“Bones!” Booth yells across the restaurant as he fills the entrance. He waggles his phone at her. “We’ve got a case.”

 


	20. Chapter 20

 

Although the day seemed fresh and even somewhat breezy in town, the sun’s shining in a nearly cloudless sky and out on the grass shoulder of Interstate 95 northbound, it’s broiling. Crouched beside Booth behind the middle seat of a green minivan with its front and side doors open, Tempe’s sweating and she’s only just started her visual exam. A blue tarp, the ends folded over by a suspicious state trooper, holds three corpses wrapped in thin, dingy fabric- maybe beige cotton blankets. Waffleweave.

“There’s dirt on the outside of all three shrouds and,” she says, pulling the shroud back on the nearest corpse. “On the inside.”

“Nice of the unsub to wrap them in plastic; we get good money for a clean car at auction,” Booth jokes. At least she thinks he’s joking.

But then he waves one hand through the stifling air, the other over his nose. “If they can get the odor out. Cat piss and corpses, they’re the worst.”

“The odor's not as strong as it could be; they were probably kept somewhere dry.” She can see now what the state trooper saw, a desiccated hand, the tendons of the wrist clinging still to the bare bone. The forearm still carries mushy flesh, bearing the small holes that mean blowfly larvae have started their work, and plenty of ink, though Temperance can’t make out the shape of the tattoo.

She peels back the shredding upper corner of the blanket, hoping there’s still some skin on the skull. The nose is gone, but a sunken cheek remains, sporting stubble, and part of the forehead remains, also inked. And his teeth are in place. This one shouldn’t be too hard to identify; she can only hope as much remains of the others. “Tats and dentals,” she says.

“What do you need?”

“The mobile. And Zach.”

“My cell’s out of service, yours?”

She slides it out of her hip pocket. “Yes.”

“Yes, you have or ... never mind. I’ll radio. It’s hot, Bones, you want shade?”

A young guy sticks his head in, maybe twenty-five, sandy-haired, with three days growth, and piercing blue eyes. Even in tee shirt and board shorts he looks fly boy instead of surfer dude. Tempe thinks maybe it’s the way military boys hold their shoulders, but even she can see he’s federal. 

“Agent Booth, sir,” he says. “Agent Robert Dryden, SBI, North Carolina.”

He still looks federal to her. 

Booth looks wary. “You’re a long way from your jurisdiction, Agent Dryden.”

“Yes, sir. But, sir, see, sir…”

“Spit it out, son.”

“This is my car, sir. Well, my wife’s anyway. It was stolen last night from her mother’s place, near Woodbridge.”

Woodbridge is south of them. Someone took an easy drive up 95 and dumped the van before getting into the congested orbit of the Beltway. Tempe doesn't bother to ruminate on why.

Booth purses his lips. “I’ll get you shade, Bones, and get a fan set up so you can come out and cool off. As soon as the screen’s up and you give the okay, we’ll crack the hatchback for you.” He creeps back, half-stands and eases out to talk to Agent Daniels. 

Tempe snaps open the kit she borrowed from the CSIs working the scene and goes to work. 

***

“We’ve got three males, two between say twenty-two and twenty-nine, and the other between thirty-six and say, forty, maybe a little older. He has osteo-arthiritis and walked with a limp. He used a cane.”

“How can you tell that?” Agent Dryden blurts out.

“What’s left of the skin on his palm is calloused and his shoulder shows repetitive use injuries common to the use of a cane on a daily basis.”

Booth taps his finger on the table in the Jeffersonian’s mobile lab. “That’s nothing. She’s really good at what she does.”

“I guess so. I’m really good at what I do, too, Agent Booth, and I seriously doubt this is in any way related to me. It’s ran…” His eyes go soft and dart up and to the right as his brows pinch down.”...dom.

Booth sits up. “What?”

“I got a complaint, a few months ago, nothing we thought justified following up, about Native American artifacts being dealt on the antiquities black market. My wife, she has a little store in Pembroke, she sells things sometimes, not antiquities really, but artifacts.”

Booth's stomach clenchs, and he glances over to see Bones staring back at him. “Um,” he says, trying to put words together in his head. “Antiquities?”

“Yeah. We have the Eastern Band of Cherokees at Qualla Boundary, of course, and  
smaller recognized tribes, but we also have a large, non-recognized Indian Community residing mostly in Robeson and Dare Counties...”

“The Lumbees,” Bones says.

“You know of them?”

Surprise, surprise. Agents spread too thin, so Cullen pulls him off AL, lobs him a soft one and boom, over the fence. Back in the game. Booth grins. When Agent Dryden looks alarmed, Booth figures out he's wearing a snarl, rearranges his lips, which doesn’t seem to help, and then just closes his mouth all together. “You’re up here visiting your mother-in-law?”

“Yeah. She’s a Lumbee. So’s my wife.”

Fucking A. “Even a blind chicken gets a little of the corn sometimes,” Booth says

Bones is so cute when she squints at him like that.

 


	21. Chapter 21

 

The bodies and Zach are off to the Jeffersonian, the green mini-van is off to the FBI lab, and Booth is sitting next to Bones in Emma Boyette Bell’s tiny, DC kitchen. Mrs. Bell is Agent Dryden's mother-in-law and the Agent in question has rounded up his wife and his kids from the matching, tiny back yard where they were playing in the hose and taken them up to dry off and change.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Bell,” Bones says and glances at him. Booth gets a bad feeling as her mouth opens, her words directed at Mrs. Bell. “You don’t look like a Native American…”

None of the Lumbees have, so far. “Bones…”

But Mrs. Bell laughs and reaches out to pat his hand. “That’s all right, Agent Booth, she’s an anthropologist, and a young one at that.”

Bones pulls herself up, but stays silent, looking uncertain, which is rare enough that Booth nods and settles back to watch.

“You’re naïve, Dr. Brennan, to think that race is as simple as a set of physical characteristics.”

Bones blinks. “The vast majority of our ability to identify people who have been…lost… to the world for some amount of time is based on physical characteristics, including ethnicity.”

“I understand. I taught introductory Physical and Cultural Anthropology classes at the University of North Carolina, Pembroke for many years. I moved here in order to work with a Native American non-profit and to further the Lumbee fight towards recognition.” She picks lint off the spotless yellow tablecloth on the small round table in her cozy, wood-floored kitchen, choosing her words. “Dr. Brennan, being Indian, and particularly, being Lumbee, is more a state of mind than a physical imperative. My ancestors were more concerned with survival and useful skill-building than inbreeding. Native Americans, and Natives in general the world over, have either been conquered or been flexible.” 

Bones cocks her head and Booth’s lips quirk. He loves it when he can see her brain click over and hum. That look is pure Corvette, electric ignition start. 

“The Lumbee have always welcomed outsiders who were willing to adapt to our philosophies,” Mrs. Bell continues. “Especially if they brought adaptive mechanisms with them, such as new tools or better ways of living. Better to our minds, that is. We don’t care if your skin is dark or light, if you have a flat or straight nose, what color or texture of hair you were given by whomever your God may be. If one was willing to join themselves to our brotherhood in loyalty and friendship, was a hard and cooperative worker, could offer new ideas or physical prowess, we took them in and they became ours. 

We adapted to the European threat better than any other tribe and blossomed. Blood ties all five hundred thousand of us indeliably, each to the other. We have always known we are Indians. Our children today know they are Indians. The other Tribes of the Americas know we are Indians. It is only the American Government who balks and demands proof, wants to see proud red brows and ink-black hair and aquiline noses and maybe a hand made war bonnet, too. That’s dried bull patties, Dr. Brennan.” 

Bones nods, but Booth knows she’s sorting the “dried bull patties” comment through her social filter, separating the kernels of useful anthropological data from the chaff. Mrs. Bell is worried that Bones isn’t following. Booth wonders if he could encourage Bones to greater facial expression when they talk to people who might be of actual help to their investigations. She hides behind her thinking face. 

Giving up on an immediate response from Bones, Mrs. Bell pets the table with her fingertips. “Lumbees are smart. We’ve pushed the legal system to our advantage ever since there was a legal system in this country, and too often, we found ourselves on the wrong side simply because we stood up and said we were Indian, when no one would’ve been the wiser had we just sat down and shut up. Passing for white, being mistaken for Negro, it goes to extremes in the Lumbee Community.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Bell,” Bones says. “I can appreciate your point. The physical characteristics traditionally associated with the various races often proves quite valuable in my work, but it’s very useful to understand the circumstances in which it may prove to be misleading as a tool to identity within a community.”

Whatever that means, Booth thinks. It occurs to him that more often than not, when Booth knew him, Danny Ghilley sat down and shut up.

“Actually, it goes further than the physical. Native Americans are somehow supposed to be 'Indians'.” Mrs. Bell continues. Her cheeks are staining a girlish pink as she becomes engrossed in her discourse. Booth revises her age estimate from sixty-two to fifty-eight. She tilts her head and offers a lop-sided grin. She’s attractive. She reminds him of his mother when she starts in on fly-fishing and water quality. “When the government became set on administering minority programs, some of our most forward citizens rallied to have us recognized, and we’ve been fighting ever since. 

Minority programs often encourage the creation and maintenance of a racial identity frozen in time. We’re supposed to look a certain way and dress in animal skins and attend pow-wows and know something mysterious that the European has never quite figured out about the universe. And if we do that, and keep a membership roll and recover our 'language', maybe we’ll be given government money to bolster our poverty, a large portion of which came about simply because we've long lived on land that’s hard to farm and made our living on crops that aren’t politically correct, and because we stood up and proclaimed we were different from the immigrants relocating to our home.”

Booth wants the conversation to move on and he’s still listening for Dryden. The kids’ voices have quieted. If he isn’t down the staircase in the next three minutes, Booth is going up. He’s skimmed the file on Pembroke, the demographics and historical highlights. “White settlers, runaway or freed slaves, and other Indians… and now you have a pretty big Mexican population, right?”

“Yes, Agent Booth. Pembroke’s not a Lumbee stronghold anymore.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“The Lumbee are a proud people, Agent Booth. We have always rolled with the tides and lived as a part of the planet, not just on it. We are also, these days, a fractured people. One group pushes for recognition, and another turns their back on it, choosing to live as we always have, within the majority, but always separate. 

Many of our younger people have adopted the customs of other southern Tribes as our own. Some have chosen to date and marry only other Indians who display the expected Native American phenotype. I find it disheartening that our inclusive culture, our oral traditions, our adaptive Lumbee nature, is being compromised by the limited world view the concept of non-adaptive evolution offers.” Leaning forward, she slaps her hand down on the table, her silver hair swinging. “It’s like living in a Renaissance Fair all the time! We’re expected to act like our ancestors, and what for? What are you? Italian-American? Irish-American?”

Caught off guard, Booth says, “Um…” while Bones and Mrs. Bell stare at him, waiting for him to answer. Bones is hiding a smirk in the corners of her upturned lips. He frowns at her.

“Whole political nations are currently being subsumed by their cultural or religious sub-groups,” Mrs. Bell says into his silence. “In part because governments have encouraged minorities within their population to remain static in order to qualify for this or that program, but that stasis only enslaves them ever more to the system as they fail to either adapt or move on. A snake eating its own tail needs decisive action.”

Ah, finally. “Are the Lumbees taking decisive action in the form of the Guard?”

Her eyes narrow. To her credit, that’s all she gives him, though. “The Guard is a children's tale, Agent Booth, from the Civil War,” she scolds him. “It's an offshoot of the Lowrie Gang legends. They fought to keep Lumbees from being conscripted by the Confederate Home Guard and they were opposed to the strong-arm tactics of the Conservative Democracy Movement, which was pro-White Supremacy. When Henry Berry died, the Gang died with him.”

“Momma!” says a long-limbed, brunette beauty from the doorway. Dryden stands just behind her, looking just like Parker does when he’s spilled his milk or streaked crayon off his paper onto the coffee table. “Don’t get her started on Henry Berry, you’ll be here for days.”

Booth wants to pursue the idea of the Guard starting with an ancestral cemetary at Douglas Point, but the moment's past and he's made Mrs. Bell wary, so instead he stands and Kiera Dryden comes to shake his hand. She’s pale, her hand cold. “I’m Kiera.”

“Agent Seeley Booth; this is Dr. Temperance Brennan. The kids?”

“I put a movie on. They’re fine for a while. Bobby says it’s bad, that there were… bodies?... in the car?” 

He gestures towards the table and the chairs Dryden has pulled out for them.

“There were three cor… males… men,” Bones says. “In your car. We have reason to believe they were in some way related to the Lumbee Community.”

“Who are they?”

Bones shakes her head. “We’re working on identifying them. Your husband believes one of them may have been the subject of a complaint regarding the dealing of antiquities.”

“Do you know anything about Indian artifacts?” Booth says, as he sits. “Maybe something that would be valuable to collectors?”

“Why were you asking Momma about the Home Guard?”

“We’ve been told there’s a faction of Lumbees who call themselves the Guard.”

“They’re just stories. Bobby would’ve heard about it otherwise, people talk to him.”

“He’s an SBI agent, he’d be the last to know,” Booth says.

Dryden tilts his head in rueful agreement.

Bones leans forward. “Do you consider yourself a Lumbee, Agent Dryden?”

He looks startled and Mrs. Bell laughs. “No,” he says. “Lumbees are Lumbee by blood. I’m loyal to my wife and her family, but I can’t ever be Lumbee.”

“Your children are, though.”

He and Kiera both nod in acknowledgement.

Booth’s still thinking of connections. Since she didn’t answer his first question, he asks another. “Did you know Jack Stratton?”

It’s Mrs. Bell who answers. “Of course, he lived three doors down from us most of his primary years. He was a sweet boy. My old neighbors have been interviewed by the police, the sheriff, the coroner, the FBI- I’m sure there are transcripts available.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve just come into this investigation at an oblique angle. We need to know if these murders are in any way related to Jack Stratton.”

“I don’t see how.”

Neither does Booth, but there’s now definitely too many Lumbees popping up this week to be a coincidence.

Back to the corpse with the cane and the only tie to the other cases- antiquities. “Do you know Samuel Lyons?”

Kiera and her Momma share a look, and then Kiera says, “He came into the shop a couple of times, looking for items I didn’t have.”

“What kind of shop do you have?”

“I sell Native American crafts- baskets, masks, arrows.”

“New?”

“Some new, some reproduced artifacts, some antique. Not as old as Lyons was looking for. He also wanted relics.”

Dryden shuffles his feet and looks at the tabletop when Booth sends a glance his way. Dumbass.

“Relics. Like bones or organs?” Bones asks.

“Yes. Sometimes things like dance bonnets or staffs have old bones attached.”

“Human?”

Momma pats Kiera’s hand and answers for her. “Probably no, although that’s always what collectors want to believe.”

“I sometimes receive that type of thing for analysis, Booth, most often it’s old Bison or fox bones.”

“Lyons wanted human bone,” Kiera says.

“Skulls with Native American markers and with provenance,” Momma clarified.

“Provenance?”

“Proof of origin. Who dug it up and where. He said he had the ability to date them. What does Samuel Lyons have to do with any of this? ”

“He’s dead,” Bones says, god damn her. 

Booth unclenches his jaw. “Do you know Danny Ghilley?”

Tears spring up in Kiera’s eyes and her fingers close on Mrs. Bell’s. “Why?”

“Kiera,” Dryden says.

Booth’s arm is resting on the back of Bones’ chair, and he touches her shoulder. She stiffens.

“Why?” Kiera says again, louder. “Is he dead, too?”

“No,” Booth lies, and waits for Bones to contradict him. She doesn’t.

Keira stifles a sob and gulps.

“But he’s in trouble.”

“That boy’s troubled, period.” Mrs. Bell says.

The serial killer was a sweet boy, and the man who took him out on behalf of a whole Indian tribe is trouble. Booth can’t figure that one out. “I knew Danny Ghilley, ma’am, a long time ago. He’s a good man.”

A calculating look crosses her face. “He’s troubled, Agent Booth, not a troublemaker. Has been ever since he got out of the military.”

Dryden says, “He was Kiera’s fiancé until he came back home, Agent Booth.”

Kiera wipes her sudden tears from her cheek and sighs. “He broke our engagement, said he couldn’t sleep. He’d walk out of town with a pack and be gone weeks, sometimes months. And then he’d show up and shave his beard and work a few weeks before he wandered off again. Three or four years ago, he bought a place out on the swamp, a cabin, basic, and started his own company making knives. I buy all the ones he makes from horn or antler. He’s been gone. He missed our last meeting.”

“Kiera,” Dryden says. “The last time you saw Danny…”

“Yes.” She sniffs. Her momma gets up and rips a paper towel from the roll by the sink and hands it to her. She dabs at her nose. 

“The last time you saw Danny?” Booth pokes.

“Samuel Lyons came in, but before I could say anything, they were growling at each other. Danny punched him, bloodied his lip, but left when I yelled at him.”

“Did Lyons say how they knew each other?”

“No. I asked if he was okay, but he didn’t say anything, just watched out the front until Danny pulled out and then left. He broke the door, slamming it so hard.”

“Did Lyons purchase anything at all from you?” Bones asks. Her tone is threaded with the tension surging under Booth's palm. 

“Sure, yes. He only came in the couple of times, but I’ve dealt with him as a wholesaler for a while. I took his orders by phone, items to re-sell, mostly, though he had me drop-ship a few things.”

“Could I get all his shipping addresses from you?” says Booth at the same time as Bones says, “What did he purchase?”

Rattled, Kiera stares at them with big, blank eyes wet with tears again.

“It’s okay, Kiera,” Dryden soothes. “I’ll call Sarah, she can fax the addresses up.” 

“Sarah works for us part-time,” he explains, scooting his chair back. “I’ll just go call…”

“Sit down. I’ve got men there in Pembroke,” Booth says. “I’ll want them to interview her. What did Lyons purchase?”

“Blankets and baskets, mostly, the hand-made ones. He favored certain artists.”

“Anything else?”

“Drums, last fall. And masks, all different types, maybe three weeks ago? I drop shipped the masks to somewhere in New York.” 

“Booth…” Bones says, and there’s a little bit of wild in her eyes he doesn’t like. It tightens his chest and clenches his fists and his voice will come out sounding dangerous.

He stands. “C’mon, Daniels, let’s go make that call.” 

*

Sitting at a cluttered desk in the den, Daniels talks to the girl on the other end of the phone line in a soft voice, explaining what he needs, that Federal agents will collect it, that no, he can’t explain right now. Booth reads the spines of the books in the shelves against the wall and wonders that anyone could have such varied interests as Mrs. Bell has on display.

When he hangs up, Dryden stares at the wall without blinking.

Booth clears his throat and Dryden sighs and closes his eyes.

“What are you thinking?” Booth says. 

“That I should’ve… made some connections.”

Booth takes a deep breath, lets it go slow and drops into the leather wingback chair nestled into the corner next to the desk. They are not quite face-to-face, not quite side-by side. They’ll talk of everything, and nothing. This has always been the way. They each have information the other wants, and they each have mandates on that knowledge. To tell or not to tell? 

It’s not the same as interviewing a suspect, and yet, it is, exactly. Booth wants to play big brother Fed to little brother State, but that doesn’t feel right and if nothing else, the years have taught Booth to trust his gut. He goes for father-to-father, head down, rolling a stray Matchbox Chevelle on the edge of the desk, with one finger. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“The guy with the limp, could she tell… could Dr. Brennan tell if he had tats? Lots of them?”

Booth shrugs, but his ears are pricked. 

“It’s just, that antiquities complaint, by Turner Colvin…”

“Turner Colvin?”

“Yes, he’s a prominent Lumbee, but removed from home. He ‘lives away’ in Lumbee terms. He’s in New York. He’s not involved much in local politics or Lumbee Tribe business. No one knows where his information flows from or what part he might play, but his name frequently comes up when there's trouble in Robeson. He’s used complaints before for legal maneuvering. We didn’t credit it much.”

Booth will return to that in a moment, but he knows a train of thought is easily derailed and it’ll be his fault if Dryden has steamed ahead already. “The man with the limp,” he says.

Dryden is pensive. He scoots forward and plucks a pen from among the papers on the desk. He flips an invoice over and writes: MS-13.

“Are you sure?”

“No. We’ve been watching him. I didn’t… It didn’t occur to me that the complaint might relate to him. It was two separate matters, I didn’t think… I didn’t think.” 

Booth is thinking. He’s thinking of Danny Ghilley on the rooftop in the morning fog. Guard takes care of their own. Sounds an awful lot like a gang motto, like MS-13’s own motto that revenge always gets taken care of, no matter if takes twenty minutes or twenty years. He’s thinking of Turner Colvin complaining about a man with a limp, a possible MS-13 gang member, who turns up dead in the back of a Lumbee Indian artifacts dealer's mini-van. And about Colvin’s brother, a serial killer who’s flexible MO has occasionally run to dismemberment and decapitation, a traditional MS-13 method. He’s thinking about an altercation in the artifact dealer's store, between Samuel Lyons and Danny Ghilley. About Stratton and Ghilley and Lyons all dead within a single day.

“What do you know about the Guard?”

“I know they exist. I’ve got a buddy who’s tracked them for years, can’t get anything solid. If you ask anyone at the SBI, they’ll shrug and say it’s not possible for the Guard to exist in any meaningful capacity without them knowing about it. But there’s whispers, there’s unsolved casework, there’s a missing bad guy or druggie or two.” He swallows, and Booth understands suddenly that Dryden is scared. “I love my wife, Agent Booth. As long as the Guard is whispers and innocents stay safe… I don’t ask my extended family too many questions when I come home.”

“Danny Ghilley’s dead.”

“He was far from innocent.”

Booth palms the tiny, orange Chevelle, closing it in his fist. “Aren’t we all,” he says.

 


	22. Chapter 22

 

“What’s the matter?” Tempe says, the instant his car door thumps closed.

Booth nocks the key into the ignition of his assigned Crown Vic, but doesn’t turn it. Dryden is still standing in the doorway, watching them go. “His wife has a store that sometimes deals antiquities. How could they not take a complaint seriously, if he knows the business?”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yeah.” Booth sighs and starts the car, raising his index finger off the wheel in what she knows to be a Southern leavetaking gesture to Dryden as he pulls from the curb.

“And?”

“He says she’s never mentioned Lyons before. That she really doesn’t deal that much in artifacts, let alone bona fide antiquities, since the Lumbees don’t have a native craft they specialize in. Her stuff comes from all over. It never occurred to him to ask her about the complaint.”

“So the North Carolina SBI did nothing to investigate the complaint.”

“He asked around a bit; his brother-in-laws, a couple of friends, called the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

“And then dropped it.”

“Drugs and gangs are more entertaining.”

She’s surprised he can still joke. “Gangs?”

“Yeah,” he says and hits the music. Hip-hop.

“In North Carolina,” she scoffs. She’s thinking of the gentle blanket of the Appalachians laid over the western portion of the state, of horses running in ankle deep sand on the Outer banks. She has a soft image of cotton and swamp as the center portion of the state. She’s never been there.

“Top two priorities and one and two in sheer volume of open investigative cases in the Charlotte and Raleigh field offices.” 

“What do gangs do in North Carolina? Steal tobacco and run…” she flails for a word… “Moonshine?”

Booth laughs. “Yeah, something like that,” he says and changes the station.

“Wait! I like that.”

“What?”

“The Black-Eyed Peas. I like them.”

His expression should be posted under ‘consternation’ in the dictionary, but he hits seek and ‘Where Is The Love’ pops back up. “… bloodz and crips and the KKK…”

“Baby formula,” Booth says.

“Excuse me?” Tempe says, lost.

“The guys in the mini-van, you said they were tattooed?”

“Yes, the older one extensively. I asked Zach to recover what he could for Angela as soon as possible.”

“I know who we need to talk with.”

*

Special Agent Norton comes hustling back in and, still standing across from them, throws black and white eight by tens down one by one until they cover the surface of the conference table in front of him. He’s a little too melodramatic for Tempe’s taste and he talks too loud. He’s beefy and flushed and courting medical mayhem, but she can’t say he’s lacking passion for his duty. He’s practically bursting his suit jacket buttons with information. 

Booth snags a couple of the photos as they slide towards him and then hands them to her. The subjects are mainly, but far from all, young Latino men, individually and in groups. They are surveillance captures, mug shots, school pictures. There are torso, arm and back shots documenting tattoo variations. She sees one that’s intriguing and digs under another to get it. 

Three soldiers lean against a Humvee, another kneels, checking supplies piled in front of them. Two of the soldiers share a common identifying mark present in some of the photos, some form of an “M” or “MS-13” tattooed on their foreheads. Many also wear the words, “Mara Salvatrucha” on their bodies. 

“MS-13’s been very active in the South, with the largest cells right here in Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland, and Washington, DC,” Norton says. “They originated in El Salvador and a lot of them have experience fighting as guerrilla rebels down there. The ones who don’t have been provided with up close and personal hands-on training courtesy of the US military.”

“I was in Guatamala for some time, I know about MS-13,” Tempe says, and tries to suppress the involuntary shudder that makes her hands tremble. “I know they’ve been growing here in the States but I didn’t realize the extent to which they’ve infiltrated.”

Booth covers her hand with his, and hides his reassuring touch from Norton’s notice by taking the photos she holds, but his searching eyes are on her face. “There’s no reason you would, most of their victims are left in public view; we’re on them in hours.”

“That’s a good word for it,” Norton says approvingly. “Infiltration. They’ve infiltrated and taken over large portions of the crime organizations in five different countries. They’re spreading into Europe. They’re violent, ruthless and loyal only to each other.”

“How do they manage to remain in the military long enough to learn useful technique?”

Norton actually laughs. “It’s not just MS-13, lots of gangs send members in. The military rewards the violent and ruthless with specialized skills training and elite privileges. Their loyalty and focus on achieving the goals their gang leaders have set for them mean they walk the line until they’re re-called by their gang. It’s becoming a problem.”

“Ya think?” Booth says mildly, but he’s kicked back. Tempe’s never seen somebody relax into anger like Seeley Booth does. And how perverted is she that she catches that current from him, strength slipping into her arms and brain and belly like an eddy that swirls between them.

Norton’s eyebrows dip, and his lower lip puckers up. He pulls a chair out and sits.

Booth’s lips are a thin line as he scans the photos. He sifts through a few, sorting them, it seems, into older and younger. Some of the boys are no more than ten or twelve. There are few girls on the table. Then she sees it. Booth cocks his head.

“The older members have more tattoos,” Tempe ventures.

Norton agrees. “Yup, and not just because they’re older. MS-13 isn’t stuck on tradition, they’re flexible and they’re becoming better organized. Locals are attending regional meetings now, sharing information, sources and goals. They can’t afford to be easily identified now that the FBI’s got interagency cooperation, shit, international agency cooperation. So the younger generation is swearing off tattoos unless they’re small and easily hidden. Some are using three dots, kind of an inter-gang ID, if you will.”

“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” Booth says, absently.

“Yeah.”

Booth continues to sort the photos, having to reach now, seeming not the least interested in Norton. “What are they into, in the South? Besides car theft and drug smuggling?”

“They’re different, I’ll tell you that,” Norton says.

Booth stops and makes a c’mon gesture with two fingers. 

“They’re smart. They do research. They’re into anything or want to be into anything that makes money. You remember the baby formula heists?”

Oh! That’s what he meant, Tempe thinks.

“Yeah, what else,” Booth grouches. He’s irritable. 

Tempe checks her watch. It’s twenty of nine, and looking like another sleepless night. Her stomach growls just as Norton opens his mouth and Booth glances at her, his eyes crinkling, one side of his mouth twitching up, before he focuses again on Norton. 

“They steal over the counter meds from drugstores- they can sweep a store in minutes. Home invasions, human trafficking, gun-running, protection rackets. Anything. Anything that makes money. They’re a kind of Mafia is what they are.”

Tempe wonders if that means they may have taken a shot at fencing antiquities – like human bone.

“Hmm,” Booth says. 

With a sudden, fierce, longing, Tempe wants her white coat, her lab, the quiet of three in the morning heavy as a quilt over her shoulders. 

***

Booth checks his watch. It’s after midnight, but he’ll give it a go anyway. He cruises into the alley behind Wong Fu’s. Sid’s blue Mercury is still parked side-long to the Dumpster. He pulls in beside it and cuts the engine. He just sits for a moment, listening to the light hush of traffic going by and gauging the slight residual pull in his neck from along his left collarbone. His knees and wrists ache, but it’s familiar and old. He needs to sleep tonight. 

He wrenches the Crown Vic’s door open and unfolds, his legs and lower back grumbling about it. He’s grown way too used to the high carriage of the Yukon. He actually got a bit of a thrill riding low to the ground today, drowning in the flow, rather than floating above it. God, he’s getting old. 

The next GTO Pops gets to restore, he’s gonna buy. Paint it candy apple red and zip it ‘round the beltway on weekends. ‘course it’ll need a roll-bar. And Parker’ll need a helmet. His fantasy dies a death as fast as his brain can supply the crush power of Tractor Trailer and Large SUV and a not-so-pretty pic of the candy-apple red Mustang sandwiched between them. 

He knocks on the kitchen door, two raps and a tap and waits. Sid opens up for him and leads him back though the dim kitchen and out into the bar. He scoops up a bottle of Kentucky’s finest, snags two shot glasses, and nods at the nearest table. 

Booth lets the first sip burn down his throat and spread through his belly before he speaks. “I needed her. Thank you.”

“She loves you, Seeley.”

“I know.”

“She came to see my auntie, but she also came to talk to me. She needs help down there. I need to go do some romping and stomping. Keep the old people in line and get the kids steering in the right direction. Angel can’t do it and Luis is… Luis.” He shrugs. 

Booth smiles. “I’ll bet Hector’s letting the kids run the business.”

“Those kids rattle off odds faster than any bookie in Atlantic.” He shoots his bourbon, looks at the bottle for a long moment, and then caps it. “I’m selling Wong Fu’s to Dago. It’s doing well right now, but I don’t expect I’ll ever see the full price outta him.” He chuckles. “He says he’s going to re-name it Sesame Sue’s.” 

Booth laughs and with a wry grin, Sid laughs, too. But then it sinks in. Booth draws in a sharp breath and downs his shot.

“You’ll come down next summer, right? Bring Parker?”

Booth pictures Rebecca’s face when he tells her he’s taking Parker to Dominica. “Sure,” he says easily. “He’s already got a passport.” 

“All right, then. You didn’t come by just to thank me for a little sexual healing.”

Booth flushes. No, he didn’t, he’s always asking and Sid’s always giving. He’d give more, but Sid’s always the one with answers and action. “Are your boys familiar with Reston?”

When Sid just looks at him, Booth continues. “There’s a white frame house there- 104 South Irwin. I need suspicious activity, enough that it gets called in.”

“B and E?”

“No. Well, maybe, if they aren’t drawing enough attention. A broken window would be good.”

Sid’s eyes glint. “A broken door standing open better?”

Booth grins.

“You owe me, Seeley,” Sid says, standing.

Booth turns his empty glass between his palms and thinks of how blood can run down a man’s rib cage feeling like just more sweat until he stops to catch the breath that just won’t stay in his burning lungs. Of a ground level view; pavement from his left eye and scuffed brown boots from his right. Rolled cuffs. Never trust a man in rolled cuffs. He’s either a felon or a lawyer. Or ex-both and makes fucking great pie. He looks up. “Everything, Sid. Always.”

“You just come see me. And wash up these glasses while I make this call.”

 


	23. Chapter 23

 

They’re in the lab. With one hand, Hodgins is stirring brownish goop in an eighty cc beaker over a little fire burning directly on his granite worktop and with the other he’s dropping maggots and cocoons into a bowl of boiling water, only just before they hit, they hatch, and a cloud of flies and moths rise in a steady spiral into the greenery of the roof.

Tempe swipes at a moth that flutters into her cheek. It’s sunset. Jack knows that, but he’s just standing there stirring. “Hurry up,” she says. He opens the skull on the worktop, scoops flies and moths into it and sets the cap back onto the ridged brow bone. Male. Caucasian. Thirty-seven years old.

“He wouldn’t understand,” Jack says gravely, handing her the skull. 

“Gravely, that’s good, Jack, I understand that.”

She’s walking. The steps off the platform are a grassy knoll. She looks over her shoulder, and Jack winks and waves. Grassy knoll. That’s pretty funny, actually. She turns left at the Space Lab and climbs a ladder straight up, the skull balanced on her head. She thinks she’s headed for the roof, but climbs out into a limestone cave. Water drips from the ceiling. Ferns pass their delicate, cool fingers over her face. 

When she takes the skull from her head, the moths and flies fluttering within and waiting along the edges of its foramina and sutures are colored; they are bright specks and rainbow wings, dotted and spotted and splashed. En masse, they fly from the skull’s optic and nasal cavities, an endless streaming spiral into the vines enveloping the cave. The vines droop and touch her as she goes until she’s brushing them aside. It’s dark in Guatemala at night. 

She looks down at the skull in her hands, to watch the moths emerging. Her wrists are bound in duct tape. She nearly drops the skull as she twists her hands. It scrapes her knuckles as it rolls, but she doesn't drop him. Booth. She can’t drop him. With her fingers hooked in the eye sockets, the moths are blocked. They beat against her bruised knuckles, her bloody knuckles beat against the door in front of her, above her. She screams in the dark, enraged, and slams her fists up, and up and up. “Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!” 

And wakes, sweat beading her lip, heart pounding so hard her stomach porpoise-rolls. Tempe turns onto her side, hangs her head off the bed and retches, but manages to keep the floor dry. She swallows and gasps and fights with her sheets until she’s upright in the damp darkness of her silent room.

*

Later, she wakes in a pool of sunlight, surprised she’s overslept the dawn. She rolls over and picks up her phone. No messages, but for some reason, it feels like the world has moved on this morning without her. She makes coffee and showers, pulls on jeans and a blue tee and chooses one of her chunky necklaces. The wooden beads are satin-smooth with tiny painted lines of red and yellow, which remind her of the flowering vines she admired in South America.

When she opens her door, Booth is standing on the other side, his fist raised to knock. 

“Hi,” she says.

“We got a warrant on the house in Reston.”

“How?”

“Suspicious activity call.” Booth glances at his feet. “Three suspects seen fleeing the scene by a bona fide good citizen janitor working across the street, who called it in. The locals found the door, uh, broken. Down. No trace of the owner.”

“Really.”

“There’s a body inside,” he offers. “Several, actually.” Something in the way he delivers this news is… ‘so two hours ago’, she hears Angela say in her head. “Henson called Caber to take possession, but she’s on another scene, so he’s asking for you.”

“And…”

“No and.”

“What condition are they in?”

He grins. “They’re in blue Rubbermaid tubs.” 

“Booth...”

“The responding officers found three empty tubs with a single human bone sitting on top of each lid. Three bones with teeny-little case numbers and your initials. I can’t believe you got away with that.”

She can’t either. Her brain’s frozen and she just looks at him. She risked his life, making those little marks, thinking someday it might be the only clue to their disappearance for others to follow. She can’t tell if he understands that as he stands there in her hallway looking back at her.

“Good going, Bones.” It’s almost a whisper, it feels like a caress. 

She steps forward and Booth steps back, giving her room to turn and lock up. She pops her phone open as they start down. 

“Zach’s already on his way,” Booth tells her. “He’s bringing Angela’s reconstructions on the guys from I-95 and Hodgin’s report.”

She closes her phone. No wonder she’d felt left behind, she had been. Her team is spectacular. She must remember to vocally praise them. Two uniforms stand down the hall, one at the elevator and one at the stairwell.

“The I-95 guys were positively identified as three members of MS-13. The younger two out of Philly and the older from New York. He’s majorly connected and we’ve already linked him indirectly to Turner Colvin through surveillance photos taken last year in another investigation. The New York office is trying to pick up the link right now.”

*

At the house on South Irwin, a tech swarm is in progress. Federal and State vans are pulled up like puppies huddled in the shadow of the Jeffersonian Mobile, which sits cock-eyed in the center of the yard. Locals claim the driveway and control the street, detouring traffic around the block. There’s plenty of gawkers up along the roof, though, across the street, where Danny Ghilley died forty-eight hours ago.

Shielding her eyes from the sun, she can see four or five bulky silhouettes at high vantage points.

Booth takes her arm. “They secured the perimeter hours ago.” She thinks she hears approval in his tone- that she’s noticed, that she actually looked up at her surroundings, which makes her feel both warm and irritated. She nods.

Henson’s on the porch, pow-wowing with a gaggle of cops. He flicks a finger her way as she and Booth pass by and walk through the open front door. The house is dim inside, and the walls loom close in the narrow hall that bisects it from front door to rear door. A 'shotgun' architecture. The rear door is open as well, with movement flickering by outside it, and a CSI in an FBI sweatshirt inside, dusting the frame.

Booth’s fingers press lightly into her lower back, steering her past deep rooms on the right and left, filled with wooden packing crates, stacks of flat cardboard boxes, rolls of bubble wrap, books and books and baskets and little stone statues and carved wooden totems and drums and feathery things. A CSI is writing on a clipboard, a camera slung around her neck. There is the gleam of glass eyes in various sizes and shiny rocks and an entire pegboard of cloudy, colored, bead necklaces. One corner is set up with a clean wooden table, with rolls of tape and labels in easy reach, looping off a small printer. A skull is sitting next to it, a little plastic, numbered marker next to it. 

Booth crowds into her, moving them left, through an small, arched foyer dominated by the open door at the top of a flight of stairs that descend into what she assumes is a basement. There’s a splash of light below and the murmur of voices. She glances at the narrow doors to the left and right. 

“Bedrooms,” Booth says. “The tubs were blocking the basement door. They were empty except for the single marked bones on each. No prints on any of them.” 

Dust and mold tickle her nose and sinuses as she tramps down, Booth close behind her. The air temperature drops ten or fifteen degrees as they go. She can hear a fan running. Since the air is relatively dry, she guesses de-humidifier. Zach is crouched between two shoulder-high rows of metal shelving filled with blue and green tubs. There are two more beyond him.

“How many bodies, Booth?” Her tone is sharper than she intended. Both the other agents in the room turn to her.

“Zach’s counting,” he says. When she looks over her shoulder, he shrugs at her. “He's counting something. I think some of the boxes are filled with just one type of bone.”

Someone clatters half-way down the stairs, calling, “Agent Booth!”

“If you need me,” he says, turning away already.

“Yeah,” she says. She pats her pockets and pulls out her gloves.

***

As he comes out onto the porch, Booth blinks against the brightness of the day. On the porch and in the yard, everyone’s talking at once and radios are squawking with static and dispatchers. A chopper swings low, and Booth ducks reflexively. He’s not alone, he notes. “Shit,” Booth says to Henson, who’s standing alone on the top step, looking at reports. “What’s going on?”

“Someone told the media we have a stack of human bones here,” Henson says. “Here.” He shoves the pile of folders in his hands at Booth, who takes them, and pulls a wrinkled box of Winstons from his suit jacket.

Booth raises his brows, but Henson ignores him, looking now for a light, so Booth turns his attention to the contents of the top folder. Pink carbons. Invoices. He scans the dates, all within the past year. All for beads and other native American items. Most are notated with “repro”, which he assumes means “reproduction”. A few are marked “authentic” or “certified” and have an extra alpha-numeric code hand-written on them. 

“Look at the next one,” Henson says with disgust.

Booth shuffles the top folder down and opens the next. He skims through the first three invoices and then stares out into the yard. Two news vans have arrived down the street and their crews are cranking their dishes up. Local’s already setting sawhorses along the perimeter in anticipation of a macabre loving crowd forming.

“Yeah,” Henson says. 

Booth ruffles through the rest of the invoices, maybe thirty tissue-thin slips of paper documenting the purchases of human bone. “It could take months to trace all these invoices for legitimacy.”

“And a dozen different cases to open along the way. And it probably doesn’t have jack-shit to do with Jack Stratton. You know how many years I’ve spent on him already, Booth?”

Booth nods, but he’s thinking of how MS-13 will do anything for money. “You got copying capability on site? The squints can start matching invoices to bones as they move them out, give us a head start on what lines up and what doesn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He takes the folders and hands them off to a young kid who’s been watching them and steps smartly to when Henson beckons. “Make sure Alvarez logged these, then make copies and see that they get to Special Agent Booth here. ASAP.”

The kid trots off the porch and into the throng, headed to one of the vans. 

“You going to talk to the media?” Booth asks.

“Fuck-no. My SAC called Cullen. He’s sending a spokesperson. No way I’m going to be the one to tell the media it’s perfectly legal to buy and sell human bones.”

“Dr. Brennan’s good, Mike. She can verify the bones marked with her signature are legitimate, and Native American. And that they’re from the Douglas Point site. In Maryland, that’s a crime. Think how happy the state boys will be to get a piece of this mess.”

“Heard about your mess; MS-13 cadavers in a Lumbee store owner's van?”

“Aside from Ghilley, I never met another Lumbee until Stratton, and now I can't turn around without bumping into one.”

Staring at nothing, Henson takes a long drag on his cigarette and then lets it out slow. “That informant? The one that helped crack Stratton?” 

Booth waves the smoke away. “Yeah?”

“He was MS-13.”

“Was?”

“He's dead. Sliced last week in the showers.” He slides his gaze to Booth, and tilts his head ruefully. “I wanted Jack Stratton, Booth.” His eyes are dark and he raises his fists; his cigarette is squashed and quivering between his index and middle fingers. “I want to go to hell and I want to rip his scrawny little head off his scrawny fucking neck and be done with him.”

Booth hears Danny Ghilley say “Right on,” in his head but says nothing. Some things are never done with and Booth figures for Henson, Jack Stratton will be one of those things, a pit of resentment lodged in his gut until he’s sitting on a barstool next to Satan himself.

***

Zach creaks to standing. Tempe cranes her neck to peer up at him. His eyes have unusally dark circles beneath them. “Is that it, Zach?” she says.

“Most of these bones are not identifiable. They’re too old. There’s no supporting evidence.”

“That is correct.”

“They’ll be relegated to storage, until we have time for them.”

There’s perhaps thousands of remains in storage in the Jeffersonian, awaiting examination. The ones needing confirmation of presumed identity, many of them soldiers; the long-buried unidentified victims of possible foul play that are shipped from locations worldwide for a whole variety of reasons, along with whatever was found on or around them; and many like these, cleaned and whitened bones, decades or centuries old, stripped of everything but their framework: sex, racial traits, height, age of death. More can be inferred, but there just isn’t time for that. Someday some grad student will collect all the thigh bones of a certain age and study nutrition, or place tissue markers on a dozen skulls and find their faces.

“Yes, Zach. As scientists, we have to set our priorities. Most of these bones…” she sweeps her hand across the orderly rows of tubs, each now bearing Jeffersonian file numbers and clear document holders containing a basic information form and, on a few, a copy of a matching invoice from the evidence being collected upstairs. “…are not our concern anymore.”

“Which ones are our concern, Bones?” Booth says from the bottom of the stairs. He’s in the way of a tech trying to move tubs up the stairs, but makes no effort to move. The tech squeezes around him with a dirty look. Booth is oblivious. 

“The Native American bones can begin the reparitriation process. Drs. Sonjay and Patrick will process them at the Jeffersonian. Some of the loose bones have drilled holes, those are probably museum or medical specimens.” 

Booth makes a circular, move on gesture, a sour grimace on his face.

Tempe frowns at him. “There are three skulls that are less than ten years old. We found two scapulas and a humerus that may or may not be related.”

“Most of these bones are cleaned, how can you tell how long ago… you know.” 

To Tempe’s ear, he sounds genuinely curious, not skeptical, so she answers him. “Ceramic fillings.”

His mouth opens as his eyebrows rise. “Oh,” he says. His lips twist closed. 

“And the bones I marked. Can the Jeffersonian take possession, or does that compromise our case?”

“I’ll find out, Bones.”

She unclips her cell phone, holding it out to him. “I’ve got Agent Baker’s number saved.”

“I don’t need Baker, Bones. I’ll take care of it.” He stomps back upstairs. 

Tempe glances at Zach, who shrugs, seeming as mystified as she about Booth’s reaction.

 


	24. Chapter 24

 

In his office the next morning, Booth mulls the possibilities, eventually letting his pencil trace the connections for him. A circle for the serial killer. A circle for his powerful brother. A circle for the cemetery. A circle each for Lyons and Ghilley and the Guards and MS-13. Circles for Ghilley’s ex-girl and her SBI husband. After a moment’s deliberation, a circle for the college professor. A line here and a line there. 

Reminds himself none of this beyond the I-95 MS-13 corpses is his case. Did the guys in the van really fit into everything else? It all comes back to the Lumbees popping up everywhere. And the circle with the most connections is Ghilley’s ex-girl. 

He calls Henson and lays out his supposition, bony framework that it is, and calls Cullen, too, so he can decide who else might want in. Fills out the paperwork and gets a car rolling.

She answers on the third ring. “Brennan.”

“Hey, Bones.”

“Booth.”

“I’m bringing in Kiera Dryden. She’s the missing link.”

“I don’t…” She takes a breath. 

He can almost feel the vibration of her frustration against his palm. She tries so hard to get him, but she just can’t quite take that leap. He takes a breath himself, lets it out slow. 

“I don’t see that, Booth, but if you do…”

“She’ll be here at ten.”

*** 

Tempe is standing shoulder to shoulder with Henson and Cullen, her arms folded, watching Booth watch Kiera Dryden as she sits across from him in an FBI interrogation room. This is the one with a window. The blinds are cracked and Kiera’s face is striped with morning sun. She glances over at the mirror every twenty seconds or so, her eyes darting over and then back to Booth.

Booth is kicked back, tapping his pen on the notebook in front of him. There’s a pitcher of water and a tray of glasses and a box of Kleenex. Planned comfort in a hostile environment. “Is that so?” he says.

“Yes,” she says, and frowns. Eyes to the mirror and back. “I don’t know what else to say to you, Agent Booth. I sold Sam Lyons the occasional trinket. I drop-shipped some masks to New York for him. I bought knives from Danny. I don’t know what his activities were, it’s not like I saw him everyday.”

“How often did you see him?”

“Once a month. Usually sometime between the fifth and the fifteenth, he’d show up with whatever he had. Sometimes he had nothing for me. Sometimes we just sat on the front steps and talked. Sometimes we went to lunch.” Her voice catches. She glances over to the mirror and then back to Booth, before looking down at her hands in her lap; swallows hard and brushes her fingertips across her dry cheek. 

Booth nudges the tissues closer to her. She ignores him and them.

He lets the silence build and then asks her, “You know Lyons's place in Reston?”

She looks up fast, too fast, Tempe thinks, and doesn’t look at the mirror as she answers. “No.”

“You don’t have an address for him in your records.”

“No. He always came to me. He paid cash or with a credit card. He had a DC zip code.”

“You’ve never been to Reston?”

She doesn’t move her eyes from his.

“Kiera? Have you ever been to Reston?”

She plucks at her upper lip and doesn’t exactly relax, but her posture softens. “Yes. My daughter went to a little camp there for a couple of weeks. My mother kept her, but I went at the end, for Parent’s Day.”

Cullen grunts and Henson turns to check the video feed on the monitor behind them.

Tempe’s not following. “What?”

“She’s trying not to lie. She had to think about it,” Cullen explains.

Henson says, “She knew we might find that out, talk to her mom, so she had to own up, but she tried to lie.”

“Why?”

“That’s the twenty-four thousand dollar question, Dr. Brennan.”

She doesn’t know why he chose that denomination, but she doesn’t bother to ask. She’s figured out that when she doesn’t get a reference, it’s sure to be from some obscure pop culture thing that won’t matter fifty years from now. 

…meet Lyons there?” Booth is saying.

Kiera hesitates. “Yes. Actually, I took him three drums and a feather mask.”

“Where did you meet?”

“Just there, at the park, near the camp. It was off Seneca Road, named after an explorer or something. He said... he said he volunteered there.”

Booth sits up, both feet square on the floor and leans towards Kiera. “I need to remind you that this is an official investigative interview. You do have the right to have a lawyer present.”

Kiera nods and glances at the mirror.

“Do you need a lawyer assigned to you?”

She looks confused. “I’m being arrested?”

“No, no. You just appear to be withholding information.”

She shakes her head, her long hair falling forward over both her shoulders. She looks down at her hands. 

“What are you not saying?” Booth pushes.

“Danny was there,” she says to her hands. “I saw him near the water fountains when I took my daughter to the rest room.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“No.” 

Temperance can see her eyes are bright under the artificial light when she brings her head up. She sniffs and swallows and finally reaches for a Kleenex. Tempe wonders why Booth is waiting for her to pull herself together instead of pushing her again. 

But then Kiera continues on her own. “He saw me, I’m sure. But he stepped around the corner and disappeared. Later when I was pulling out, I saw him in a beat-up truck, with another man from Pembroke. I think they were tracking Lyons.”

Tempe says it aloud along with Booth. “Tracking?” Cullen and Henson both turn to her.

“Y’know,” Kiera says. “Following him. It looked like they were following. Danny didn’t see me.”

“Do you hunt Kiera?”

Tempe smiles. 

Cullen sighs. 

Henson shifts his weight. “Does he always interview like this? It seems kinda random to me.”

“It’s what makes him one of our best, Agent,” Cullen answers.

“He’s very intuitive,” Temperance says. “He reads people very well. Her use of the word ‘tracking’ indicates she has some experience not common to the average twenty-six year old American female. Since she comes from a tradition that allows the teaching of hunting skills to both male and female progeny, Agent Booth deduced she may have hunting skills, which may include the use of crossbows, the use of which has recently been employed to stymie the technologically advanced techniques used by the FBI.”

“I know, I was there,” Henson drawls.

“Knives can be made using several different combinations of metal, and Danny Ghilley made knives. The Jeffersonian has been unable to determine the weapons that were used to kill the men found in Kiera Dryden's van nor the two men and the woman buried at the Douglas Point cemetery…”

“Are they connected?”

Temperance shrugs. “Their wounds are extremely similar. We’re analyzing the available evidence to uncover any connection to a possible assailant or assailants. All we can say right now is that they were definitely murdered, probably all within a similar time frame.”

Henson makes a face. “Yeah, yeah. That’s the same thing you told me three days ago.”

“When we know more, I’ll let you know. The point is, the weapons may have been crossbow bolts, but we’ve been unable to match a manufacturer to the bore size that caused the fatal wounds.”

Henson looks around her to Cullen. Temperance sees that Booth is standing. She shoulders past Cullen and meets Booth in the hallway.

“Did you get that?” he says.

“Yes. She has hunting skills; she may use a crossbow. Ghilley may have made crossbow bolts in addition to knives.”

“Uh, good thought. No, I meant that she can describe the man with Ghilley at the park in Reston, but she doesn’t know his name.”

“Oh. No, we were discussing Henson’s case.”

Booth rolls his eyes. “I want to bring her to the lab, get Angela to work with her. She’s better than the artist we’ve got right now.” 

“Okay. What about the crossbow bolts?”

“What about them?”

“We need to find Ghilley’s cabin, see if he made bolts. The puncture wounds we’ve found don’t correspond to standard bolt sizes, but every other marker indicates that’s what caused them.”

From behind her, Cullen says, “We already have field agents trying to locate it, Dr. Brennan. He lived somewhere north of Pembroke in unincorporated Robeson County. We’ve narrowed it down, but he lived below the radar, very simply. There’s nothing in his name. Didn’t even own a car.”

“At least not legally,” Henson mutters.

“Kiera doesn’t know where?” Temperance asks. She must know.

“If she does, she won’t say,” Booth says. 

Temperance thinks of the man that could be Booth’s brother, hunched over on the bus stop bench, hands loose. About the scar on his face and the agility of his leap into action, and the blood on his hands. He was proud to be a Lumbee. He had no official connections to the world beyond his military service. “Ghilley didn’t think of himself as an U.S. citizen. The Guard, if it exists, operates outside U.S. law.” 

Booth nods. “And there’s enough of them to require organization, training. They’d need privacy.” 

As she hears it out loud, the thought becomes clearer and she says with more confidence, “Look for private property, anything larger than say, a thousand acres, within twenty miles of Pembroke.”

Head down, Booth is jingling the change in his pocket as he thinks. “I doubt it’s on any sort of actual road.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he says, looking up at her. “If I were him? I’d be so buried in those woods, you’d need pack animals to get in.”

He hears himself and grins when she does. 

Henson says, “Shit. I gotta go make calls,” and goes striding down the hall.

Cullen looks from her to Booth and back again with the slightest of frowns forming a crease between his brows. He nods once and says, “Good work.” He tilts his head toward the interrogation room. “What are we doing with Ms. Dryden?”

***

Kiera is wide-eyed as she enters the heart of the Jeffersonian Medico-Legal Lab. Her expression reminds Booth of his first time through those glass doors into the plant and light filled Medico-Legal Lab filled with all things scientific. The juxtaposition of leafy greenness and sunlight layered with steel rafters and focused halogen brightness and beeping, blinking, shushing technology is as startling as an epiphany. If high school labs were so attractive, there’d be more scientists in the world.

Of course, it’s the Jeffersonian. The FBI lab is work-a-day. No windows, in the portion he has to visit regularly, which is below ground, and the chemical smell is overwhelming. It seems to him like all the other labs he's been in are the same, so all those high school kids would be sorely disappointed upon college graduation unless the Jeffersonian hired them all. 

“Booth? Are you coming?” Bones calls to him. She and Kiera and the young agent assigned to her are halfway around the platform, on the way to Angela’s office.

He drags his gaze down from the wavery edge of the sender bamboo that’s grown within three feet from the lowest ceiling beam and feels the bulk of his gun under his arm. His shoulder holster is a tight band across his chest. “Yeah,” he says. 

She waits for him. Kiera and Samuels have stopped, waiting for direction, and now he has to say something as he starts forward again. “Doesn’t the Jeffersonian have plant people? It’s way overgrown in here.” 

“It’s nice,” Kiera says as he catches up.

“Plants filter toxins, Booth,” Bones explains. Unnecessarily, since any eighth-grader knows that. “They absorb carbon dioxide and oxygenate the air.”

Booth rolls his eyes and pulls his coat off. “It’s humid in here.”

Bones pointedly ignores him. Booth drops back a step, unbuckles his holster and takes a deep breath. 

Angela has a figure up on the Angelator when they crowd into her office. “Angela Montenegro, Kiera Dryden and Junior Agent Samuels,” Bones says as introduction. 

Both Samuels and Kiera inch up close to the railing surrounding the hologram, staring at the rotating image. It’s human, but that’s all you can tell. It looks like the chest is flayed open.

Angela says, “Muscle, fat, fasia, skin.” With each word, a layer folds itself over the torso until it’s whole. “We can mark depth of puncture to help calculate force or even differentiate between various types of blades in the case of a stabbing.”

“Wow,” Kiera says.

Samuels gives Booth an assessing glance. Booth shrugs.

Angela sees the exchange and grins at him and Booth feels better. She collapses the hologram and turns to Kiera. “So, let’s go find out who you saw.”

“Samuels stays with her,” Booth says. It comes out harsh and he clears his throat.

Angela glances at Bones, one of those what’s eating him, tell me later glances, and he says, “What?” 

Angela turns, sweeping her open hand towards her office next door. “So, Agent Samuels, are you single?” she asks as she leads them off.

Bones is standing with her arms crossed, staring into the empty space of the Angelator.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Booth ventures.

She just shakes her head. “I’ve got paperwork,” she says and turns on her heel. 

“Okay, I’ll just…” He looks around. “…go,” he says to himself.

He wanders upstairs, drapes his coat over the railing, and looks down through the thin fringe of green at the sterile platform below. He leans, bracing on his elbows to watch. Hodgins is futzing at the scopes and Zach is going back and forth between a table and a cart, laying bones out. 

The irrigation kicks in, spraying a fine mist onto the central thicket of bamboo and into the planters placed sporadically along the boundaries of the lab. He tracks the nozzles, laid out in an intricate jigsaw of lines to water everything that needs it and keep the water off everything that doesn’t. His mind wandering through its own puzzle of thoughts, he tries fitting pieces together in various ways.

How big is the population of South Americans in Pembroke? Could there be an ingrained group of Hispanics? Would the Lumbees be accepting of that? As far as he can gather from the reports filed daily from the field, the Mexicans aren't well-liked. That's because they'll work for even lower wages than the blue-collar Lumbees at the chicken plants and other industry in the area. In the past, the Lumbees have accepted every other group of outsiders, using them to nurture their own needs, but ultimately absorbing them rather than being changed in their ways. They grew on their own terms. And most of their active growth remained underground, spreading under a protective layer of assimilation. 

A cover of assimilation. Like his kidnappers playing Indian, maybe the Lumbees still only play at being American, at least a select group of them. Maybe Ghilley really never did think of himself as a U.S. citizen. Booth can’t shake Zach’s question, “Are they insurgents?” His immediate rebound thought is still no. No. Danny fought by his side, you can’t pretend that. Danny was protecting his country. He said more than once that it was an honor to do so. A man had come up to them once, in an airport somewhere, and thanked them for their service. They had all shuffled their feet and looked at the ground, but Danny stuck out his right hand, which the man shook firmly. Before he let the man go, left hand over his heart, Danny said, “It's an honor to serve my country, sir. You take care now.”

They had ribbed him over that... you take care now. Called him Mayor Ghilley for days. It's an honor to serve my country, sir. You take care now.

Maybe it was Danny’s country regardless of the political entity running it. How much did he really care about the governmental overlay. If it was England, say, or Spain, or France who was here on American soil, would Danny have cared?

No.

He traces the sightlines of the lab's steel skeleton. But it’s not like Danny wanted to overthrow the government. More of a co-existence. Booth watches Bones trot up the platform steps to murmur something to Zach. A partnership, but the other party’s unaware of the depth of the bond.

She leans over Hodgin’s shoulder and points at the monitor and then stands and looks around. She looks up then, turning, turning and finds him. He sketches a wave. She smiles. He can live with that.

 


	25. Chapter 25

 

Angela finds them in Bones’ office. Booth has been returning calls to all the various investigative assistants who seem to think he’s holding the answers to all their unsolvable questions if they can just ask the right question. 

“No,” he says, as Angela sits down on the coffee table in front of him. “I don’t think I traveled more than ten or twelve clicks from the time I woke up to the time I located Dr. Brennan.” 

“Is that all?” A barely-out-of-basic math geek asks, not bothering to hide his disdain.

“Yeah, that’s all. I was drugged. There wasn’t exactly a trail.”

“So there was some trail- a deer trail, maybe?”

“No, there was no trail at all, mostly. I crossed deer trails, I was just being… 

“Did you mark the spot at which you regained conciousness?”

“No. I did not mark the spot in a permanent way. Did you read the transcripts at all?” 

Angela is holding the pad inward. He spins his finger, asking her to show it to him. 

Score one for the geek, Booth thinks as the guy ignores his sarcasm. There’s a rustle of paper. 

“Did you see conifers in the immediate area? Y’know, pine trees, spruce?”

“Yes,” he says. 

Angela glances at Bones, who’s also on the phone. 

“Only pine?”

“No. Lots of Rhododendron,” Booth says and waves to get Bone’s attention. He hears ‘fracture of the greater trochaner, though there’s… on the… seam’

Bones shakes her head and spins her chair so they can’t see her while she talks. 

“ …steads.”

Oh, for god’s sake. “What?” he has to ask, because he’s only heard half the question he’s being asked. 

“You walked across an abandoned farmstead, right?” 

The geek sounds confident. Booth doesn’t know what the fuck he walked through. An awful goddamned amount of hardwood and a shitload of rhododendron. And a river.

“Ask the Guard.” 

Angela flips the pad around.

“The Guard? I’m not following… can you explain who… ” 

Well, shit. “No, I won’t explain what that means... I’ve got to go.”

“The National...” the geek's saying as Booth snaps his phone closed. 

“I know that guy,” he says to Angela.

“Really?”

Booth taps his forehead “Yeah, I do.” He sees him in orange, but can’t place the image. “Can you make his hair shorter?”

Angela makes a few strikes across the paper and then digs a gum eraser from her lab coat pocket and rubs at it. She flips it back around.

Booth nods. 

“His eyes are more almond-shaped,” Bones says. She’s come around from behind her desk and stands with her feet apart, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her black slacks. “And his brow bone’s been broken on the left side.” She rubs her eyebrow. “He had a dent, probably a childhood accident. And the bridge of his nose is lifted on that side.”

“Like a bump, “Angela says, and goes to work again.

“Yes, but it wasn’t broken.”

“Bones?” Booth says.

“It’s Lab Rat,” she says, finally looking at him. “He was coming out on the ATV, when we went into the woods at Douglas Point.”

“Bingo! The scuzzy guy,” Booth says, leaping to his feet. “I knew it!” 

“You did not,” Bones retorts.

“Ah,” Booth starts, but Angela cuts him off.

“You so did not know,” she says. “Is this better?”

Bones nods. 

The minor changes have triggered Booth’s memory. It is Lab Rat and Booth can feel the trees around him again. How still it was, how watched he felt as he and Bones traipsed into their kidnapping. “Where are they? Samuels and Kiera Dryden?” he says, his thumb sliding to his speed-dial.

“Reception B,” Angela tells him.

“Will you load that into NCIC? And I need a copy. Is that the one with the brown leather?”

“Yes,” she says. “Across the atrium, on the right.”

When his feet hit the hallway, he’s already requesting personnel records from all agencies responding that day at Douglas Point. He feels tight and focused, back on the rails of the case. They all fit together, he knows it in his gut. The kidnapping and murders and his gangbangers in the mini-van. 

“Booth,” Bones says, and turning, he says, “Hold on,” to Headquarters. 

She doesn’t say anything else, just stands there a moment. He raises his eyebrows, waiting. Her lips flatten and then she shrugs and shakes her head. Booth would like to pretend he’s confused, but he understands his partner all to well. He nods, silently agreeing to be careful. HQ asks if he he’s still there, “Yes,” he says and walks away from Bones. He doesn’t look back.

*

Samuels is playing on his Blackberry while Kiera is digging in her purse. She comes up with a chapstick as Booth trots down a short flight of stairs and into the reception area. Huge plate glass windows and patio doors frame a stunning view of the Jeffersonian’s east side garden with it’s multi-level Koi pond. He’d never known the pond existed until Hodgins took Parker out into the garden one Sunday when they’d been forced into work on a deadline. 

Parker still talks about being the one to find the purple fairy caps hiding along the rock retaining wall. Jack had needed a sample of them to prove his theory concerning the victim’s use of an herbal digitalis and paid Parker in M & M’s, which Parker then insisted on leaving for the fairies. Rebecca hasn’t let Booth live that one down yet, though he had drawn the line at building a fairy house later, steering Parker into a game of catch instead.

“It’s beautiful,” Kiera says. “I’m going to bring the kids when they’re a little older.” 

Samuels jumps to his feet, a guilty look sliding across his face. “Sir.”

“Ms. Montenegro is making me a copy of her sketch, Samuels, could you collect it for me? Ask her to shoot it over to my e-mail, too, okay?”

Booth is pleased to see Samuels hesitate, glancing over at his assignment, who suddenly looks wary.

“Go, Samuels, I need a couple of minutes. We’ll be right here.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Samuels says and leaves.

Booth sighs and sits at the opposite end of the couch from Kiera Dryden. “Who is he, Kiera?”

She laces her long fingers together in her lap. Her nails are short and unpolished, but clean and smooth. Booth settles back and stretches his legs out. The open alcove is quiet, though there’s foot traffic through the atrium. He can hear the echo of heels across the marble and voices that blend into a hush like the murmur of water. 

Kiera simply waits through the lull of his expectation, as unfathomable and implacable as the colored Koi lazing their way through the cool currents of the pond just beyond the glass wall she's staring a hole through.

“He’s a lab tech,” Booth says. “State, maybe, maybe Federal. He knew who we were. Maybe he set us up or maybe he was just a sentry, doesn’t really matter. He’s Lumbee.”

“He’s not Lumbee.”

“What’s his name, Kiera?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve seen him in Pembroke.”

“Yes.”

“He's MS-13.”

She goes as still as the Koi when Parker's shadow dropped over them. Booth can see her pulse beat in her throat. “No,” she says firmly. She looks down and pulls a small notepad from her purse. “I have to go now. Do you have a pen, Agent Booth?”

Booth reaches for the pen inside his suit jacket pocket, saying, “I can't let you do that, Kiera.” 

She only holds her hand out for the pen. He slaps it into her palm.

“Here's the number where you can reach me,” she says as she writes.

“I'll have Agent Samuels escort you back to Hoover.” Booth glances down. “And then we'll...”

Kiera stands, brushes off her skirt, bends towards him as if in farewell and then strides away, backbone straight, her shoulders thrown back and head raised.

Booth watches her leave. The note says: “Eppy” Sandoval – Fed- tat behind ear- cuz TJ Martel m Sarah Walker, Pembroke 

Agent Samuels leans around the half wall above a big planter. Booth tips his chin towards Kiera as he holds his hand up to his ear, miming a call. Samuels nods and slinks off in the same direction as the interestingly paranoid Kiera Dryden. 

Booth stretches, eases up, and strolls back towards the lab, talking to the office on his cell, and then Cullen. He loiters outside Bones' office, still organizing through dispatch. When he's done, he crosses over her threshhold. Bones doesn't even look up, she only spins her chair to put her back to him. Booth decides that's totally annoying. He drops onto her couch and smoothes his tie, waiting for Samuels to call. 

“Yes, that's correct,” Bones says into the silence. “Yes.”

She sounds tired. 

“You can?” she says, surprised. “Excellent!”

Booth sits up. What the hell is she doing?

“Thank you,” she practically crows. “Thank you, yes, you, too.” She rotates back around, grinning, and sets the phone onto its cradle.

Sinking back into the plush pillows at his back, Booth raises his brows at her. His phone rings. He holds up one finger and her mouth closes.

“Booth.”

“Samuels, sir. Ms. Dryden exited through the museum, sir. She waited until a large group was leaving the theater, joined them, and proceeded into the main hall. I thought she entered the ladies room, but I....”

“So you lost her. Already.” 

“Yes, sir,” Samuels whispers. “She... I'm actually pretty good at survelliance, sir, really.”

Booth gives him a gusty sigh, for show, but then lets him off the hook. “She's been well-trained, Samuels.”

“Should I...”

“No, we're done here. Write it up, and leave it on my desk.”

“Yes, sir.”

Booth slides his thumb down over the phone and then rubs his eyes.

“Kiera Dryden?” 

“Yeah. She's part of this.”

Bones leans back. Her gaze touches his skin, travels along his core to his face, until he's looking directly into her open eyes. He smiles, and she smiles back.

“What are you thinking?” she says.

“That I've never known anyone who keeps their eyes open the way you do. You look at life and you look at death and you never flinch.”

She frowns at him, and then slowly closes her eyes.

His blood surges, sudden desire springing up and closing his throat. “Bones.”

Her eyes open, and she's laughing at him already, deep inside. “Kiera Dryden.”

“She I.D.'ed Labrat. Eppy Sandoval. He's MS-13. His cousin married a Lumbee.”

Angela leaps into the room, startling them both. “Ephraim Julio Martinez Sandoval.” 

Booth waves his hand at her as Bones says, “We know.”

“But did you know he works for the FBI?”

Booth's stomach burns straight up into his throat. He swallows. “Yeah.”

Angela puts her hands on her hips, the Sandoval file jutting out like a broken wing. “Well, where was I?”

“Doing your job, Angela,” Bones states.

Booth stands. “And doing it well. Thank you. Kiera spilled.”

She nods. “I'm getting coffee, want anything?”

“No,” he says, watching Bones from the corner of his eye. “I think we're going to be busy in a sec.”

Bones cocks her head.

“Oh,” Angela says in a lower tone, turning to look at Bones. “And what does that mean?”

Bones shrugs. 

Booth's phone trills.

“Booth.”

“Headed towards Reston.”

“Thanks, Sully.”

He snaps the phone closed. “Kiera's going to Reston. Want to go?”

 


	26. Chapter 26

 

Pulling the Crown Vic into a wide turn, Booth manuvers them into place alongside a SWAT team SUV parked on the blacktop at Kingston Place, a little strip mall three miles from the Reston city limits.

Another big, black Yukon is parked at a slant along the SWAT truck's front bumper. A third Yukon pulls in beside them. Booth jerks on his door and climbs out, so Tempe does the same. The agents are all in vests. The woman among them, a sharp-faced agent with her hair pulled straight back off her face in a tight tail, gives Tempe a nod.

“She's headed northwest on Seneca, but she's already by-passed the park,” one of the SWAT officers reports.

“Special Agent James Ashford, Maryland Field Office,” says the tall agent who climbed out of the third Yukon. His badge swings forward on the lanyard around his neck as he offers his hand. He's of mixed race, built broad, and obviously fit. The structure of his face is quite... athestically pleasing. 

“Booth,” Booth says and they share a hard, quick shake. “This is Dr. Brennan, with the Jeffersonian.”

“Of course,” Ashford says and gives her a little wave-salute. 

“Vests?” the SWAT leader says. 'Watkins' is stenciled on his vest. He's a chunky caucasian with dark red hair. He looks engineered for SWAT.

Ashford and Booth move to their trunks, the radios in the Yukons crackle. Bones doesn't know what to do with her hands. Booth comes back in his shirt sleeves and vest, holding another up for her. She slides her arms in, wondering when he stopped even trying to order her out of the way. 

“Yes, sir,” the team leader says to no one, and then, “Agent Booth, the subject has entered a house on Olive Avenue. Reporting unit is continuing survelliance from a hundred yards west. Dispatch informs me it's the home address on record for Samuel Lyons. Multiple civilians inside.”

Booth stares into the coming dusk. “What cars are parked outside? Any white Sentras?”

The leader relays the question and they all wait. The setting sun's red rays reflect off their badges, the butts of the pistols at their hips, off the barrel of the rifle Ashford holds in one hand. The kevlar vests, though, seem to absorb the light, disconnecting the agents' heads and limbs into parts that move independantly. A typical predator-prey strategy. Bones files the image away for future reference in her writing.

“Two four-door Hondas with Florida tags. A Ford Mini-Van with Maryland plates registered to his daughter, who positively identified him at the morgue. A BMW, and GMC pick-up truck with Virginia plates. Cross-checking owners.” 

Booth is silent. After a moment, he opens his phone and dials. “Sully? It's Booth. Did you get ownership yet on the house at 104 South Irwin ?” He paces between the Yukons. “Lyons. Has Samuel Lyons daughter been interviewed?”

He catches her eye and shakes his head. “Yeah. Stick there a little while.” He slaps the phone shut.

“We need coverage on the house, but keep it back,” he tells Watkins. “And watch out for anyone else creeping around on the perimeter.”

“We've been briefed on the sniper attacks, sir,” the man says, with just a trace of condensation.

Booth's eyes narrow, but he doesn't say anything. 

Ashford snorts. 

“Let's go offer our sympathies. Ashford?”

“Right behind you.”

“Is Henson coming?”

“Delayed. Flat tire or something.”

“Jawbones?” Booth asks, and two SWAT team members fish out twin ear pieces for Booth and Ashford. As the agents fit their earpieces, the team slap mics onto the velcro patches on both men's Kevlar vests.

They leave Watkins and his team to it and head towards Lyons' home, Booth keeping his Crown Vic at the speed limit. The headlights of Ashford's Yukon bounce off the sideview mirror into Tempe's eyes. She slides over a bit, drawing Booth's attention.

“So what was so excellent when you were on your phone at the lab?”

“What?”

“Before we left, you were excited about something on the phone.”

Temperance's face flushes. “Oh, nothing.”

He clucks. “C'mon, Bones, fess up.”

“The insurance company said they could replace my CD's.”

“And...?”

She sighs. “I had a limited edition BeeGees CD. They found another for me.”

“The BeeGees.”

“You have a very limited range of musical tastes, Booth.”

“But the BeeGees?”

“Their music is very positive. Uplifting, even.”

“They covered 'Islands In The Stream',” he says disparagingly.

“I like them.” She points up the street and to the right. It's an older neighborhood, there's maples planted along the street at thirty-foot intervals, their symmetry broken by driveways and streetlights and holes where some have failed to thrive. “There's the house.”

Booth grunts.

Carrying his rifle, Ashford joins them as they stride up the sidewalk. They haven't removed their vests, and she feels self-concious about hers in an uncontrolled situation. One in which their intrusion in the grieving process will be unwelcome.

Ducking low, Booth scans the windows of a red Toyota Camry.

“Dryden's car?” Tempe asks.

“Yeah,” Booth says and tries the door. It's open, but he doesn't search it, just shuts the door again with two hands, muffling the sound.

Crossing the curb, Ashford walks on the street-side, checking the interior of each vehicle along with Booth. There's a flicker of movement ahead, and Temperance glances up. A figure in dark clothes makes the corner of a house three doors down and slides into cover. She checks her surroundings, but doesn't see anyone else.

Booth keys the mike velcroed to his vest and says, “Watkins?” and to Tempe, “All set, let's go.”

Ashford flanks her at the foot of the walk and Booth leads the way to the stoop. The door opens before they knock, and a girl rushes out, her head tucked down, straight into Booth's arms. She yelps and pulls away, but he hangs on. “Are you okay?”

She glares up at him, her long, heavy fall of black hair swinging back over her shoulder. Her blue eyes are bright, and tears streak her cheeks. The red apples of her cheeks pale as her lips part. She rakes her gaze down Booth and back up Temperance. 

“Ms. Pine,” Tempe says.

The girl's eyes dart to Ashford. She opens her mouth, to protest, Tempe assumes, but Booth spins her, sliding his hands down her arms. Ashford steps in close to back him up. Booth snugs her wrists into his cuffs and recites Miranda in a low rumble close to the girl's ear; so low and furious, Tempe can barely hear him. 

A beefy, red-faced man enters the hall from a room on the left, takes in their tableau, and shouts, “Hey!” 

He runs straight at them. 

Tempe steps over, in front the girl. Ashford's rifle barrel rises in her peripheral vision, over her right shoulder. The man skids to a stop, hands raised.

“Where's Kiera Dryden?” Booth barks. 

“Who?” the man stutters. Tempe thinks his confusion looks genuine.

“Kiera Dryden,” Ashford repeats. 

Booth pulls Ms. Pine further back and Ashford's now a solid wall at Tempe's back.

“Sarah,” the man says, looking past Tempe.

“Agent Ashford, FBI. Please identify yourself.” 

The man's wide face twists up ugly. “What is this?”

“Sir, please identify yourself.”

A child, under ten, blond and androgynous, leaps into the hall and belts away, deeper into the house. “Uncle Mark! Uncle Mark!”

“Fuck,” Ashford says under his breath. “Dr. Brennan, please back away, slowly.”

A loud voice yells, “What's going on here?” and then a back door somewhere out of Temperance's sight cracks as it breaks and someone screams. 

Calls of “FBI!” and “Down, down, down!” and “Clear!” follow, overlapping one another. Tempe freezes. The man standing in front of them is shaking, his hands making little circles in the air. His eyes are wide and locked on Ashford. A SWAT officer eases around the furthest corner into the front hall. It's the woman. She lifts a hand, and another officer darts past her and disappears.

She creeps forward toward the front door, her gaze sweeping from side to side. She clears the rooms to either side, and then reaches up and takes one of the man's hands. Although he knows she's there, has heard her progress forward through the hall, he still jumps when she touches him. And then bursts into tears. She cuffs him, Ashford lowers the rifle and Tempe finally steps inside. 

“Where's Kiera Dryden?” she asks him.

“I don't know,” he cries. “I don't know a Kiera.”

“Do you know Samuel Lyons?”

“My uncle. He... he died, we're just... we were trying to make arrangements, y'know, for when the cops release him for b...burial.”

“Kiera entered this house. She's about thirty, white, tall, slender, brunette.”

The man shrugs. “Ask Mark. I don't know her. She was talking to Sarah out front.”

“House is secure, Dr. Brennan,” Ashford says as Booth shouts “Goddamnit” from out by the street. “Kiera Dryden is not inside.”

With a fierce grip on his elbow, SWAT team leader Watkins steers a fuming man into the front hall. He's obviously related to Samuel Lyons's nephew, but he's taller, with darker eyes and slimmer features.

“Your brother?” Tempe asks the nephew, who has yet to tell them his name.

“My cousin, Mark Lyons.”

The hairs on the back her neck rise. 

“Where is she?” Booth demands from directly behind her.

Mark sets his jaw. Booth brushes past her, shoving Lyons's nephew into the unfazed SWAT officer holding him, to grab the asshole's neck. Staring into Booth's eyes, Mark Lyons chokes. Ashford turns around, facing the street and the commotion that's begun to play out there, and blocks them all from view. 

Mark Lyons's breath is a whistle in his throat before he licks his lips. Booth loosens his hold just a bit.

“She came in and then straight out the back.”

“Why?”

“She wanted a key, some key she said my Dad had...”

“To what?”

“I don't know,” he gasps.

Booth tightens his fingers. The rigid lines of his shoulders quiver with effort, or maybe emotion. The cords of his neck stand out.

“I let...I let her look...”

“At what?”

“The rack. The key rack in the kitchen.”

“What did she take?”

“I don't know...”

Booth shakes him, like a hunting terrier holding onto a rabbit. 

“Easy, Booth,” Watkins cautions, and Tempe sees Booth's fingers give again.

“You're Booth?” Mark wheezes.

Booth frowns at him. Tempe rolls her eyes. Even she knows not to jeopardize their postion by giving the suspect information.

“She left you a note. She took the tractor keys, to Daddy's 1948, the Ford 3500.”

“A tractor?” Tempe echoes. Her brain doesn't know what to do with that info.

“Where's it stored?” Ashford asks.

Booth shakes the man.

“The maintenance shed at Raleigh Park. He was building a house next door.”

Booth lets go and shoves Mark hard in the center of his chest, sending both Mark and Watkins reeling several steps back.

Temperance flings herself about-face, headed for Booth's Crown Vic. Kiera can only be after one thing: remains. Booth crowds her steps. Ashford is trotting fast, already halfway down the walk. An officer in an FBI jacket is talking to Ms. Pine next to an unmarked Yukon. Five or six neighbors are standing in a cluster in the brown grass of the yard across the street.

“On Seneca,” Watkins yells after them. 

Booth waves, already venting into his phone, demanding NCSBI Agent Robert Dryden be taken into custody, that the New York office pick up Turner Colvin, that someone find Eppy Sandoval, figure out his connections to the MS-13 corpses and to the Lumbee community, and that somebody put Cullen on the line, goddamnit, right now. 

He stops cold when she opens the passenger door. “”Bones, I don't think...”

She narrows her eyes at him in what she thinks is her meanest expression and folds herself into the car. Leaning sideways, she uses both hands to slam the heavy door shut as hard as she can.

The roof thumps under Booth's frustrated hands, and then, still growling into his phone as he waits for Cullen, he throws himself down into the driver's seat, wincing at the tight fit, and cranks the engine over.

 


	27. Chapter 27

 

Traffic is heavy. Booth has his emergency lights on, Ashford's lights behind him spin in counterpoint, nearly washed out by the flood of wide yellow street lights. Without the sirens, cars are slow to get out of their way. The Crown Vic corners onto Seneca with a big sway. Tempe grabs the dash, but doesn't drop her phone. Booth has to swerve immediately into the left lane to avoid an old blue station wagon. A pick-up truck's tires squeal as its driver brakes hard behind them. 

“Shit,” Booth grates, his hands clenched tight around the wheel. 

In her ear, Zach says, “Raleigh Park is 76.4 acres. Its trapezoidal. The playground and picnic area are off Seneca, at the main entrance. The northeast side sits on Lake Wilma. There's a covered pavilion and boat ramp there, through the Park's back entrance on Gibson Road.”

“The entrance road forks past the pavilions, and there's another small parking area to the right, with access to undeveloped land east of Lake Wilma with frontage on Gibson Road. I think the maintenance building sits back there, from looking at the satellite image.”

The sign for the main entrance is just ahead, Tempe pushes at the air in front of her. “Go past it, Booth.”

Glancing askance at her, he does. “Where?”

“Next right, to the corner, than turn again on Gibson. There's a second entrance. Thanks, Zach.” 

Touching the small, round disc velcroed to his vest, Booth says, “Gibson entrance.”

Tempe's intrigued by his headset. She's seen him use one, but not in this way. Is he speaking only to Ashford? What's his range? She holds her tongue, though. Undoubtedly, Booth would consider this an inappropriate time to discuss the use of his tactical gear. 

With a thousand-yard stare, Booth frowns as he slip-slides into the sharp corner turn. Bracing herself between the seat and the dash, Tempe watches him listen to the voices in his head. The tires spin and catch, jerking them straight again and he accelerates down the long block to Gibson. “Eppy Sandoval's been in and out of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey penal systems since he was thirteen years old for gang-related activity, MS-13. He was working as a lab tech in the Maryland Field Office under the alias Dennis Macon. Your Ms. Pine is Lumbee Sarah Walker Martel, his cousin's wife. They're still digging on the cousin. He's further up the food chain.”

“Sandoval, and his cousin, are of mestizo descent,” Temperance conjectures.

“Mestizo?”

“The majority of the population in El Salvador is mestizo, a mix of Spanish and Native American.” 

“Native American? In El Salvador?”

She laughs, she can't help it. “Central American Indians. The U.S. appropriated the term 'American', Booth, but the Central and South Americans are 'Americans', too.” 

“Oh.” He grimaces, focused on road. He fishtails onto Gibson before glancing over. The corner of his lips quirk up in what she might describe as 'sheepishly' if he were her character Andrew, and she were willing to use an adverb. 

She turns, and starts helping him look for signs of the maintenance shed in the park. They pass an unmarked dirt road. The night is dark on Gibson, with no street lights along the park's boundaries, but the entrance to the boat ramp should be well-lit. “There was a Native American massacre in the thirties in El Salvador, so the population denies their Native American heritage much expression.”

“Like the Lumbee.”

“Yes.”

“MS-13 is...damn, Bones, if Sandoval is MS-13....”

“The FBI's systems for identification and background checks of potential employees failed. Viewed alongside Agent Kenton's long-term deception, it would appear that the FBI's security checks and reviews are outdated.” The headlights reflect off something in the trees off the road's gentle curve and draws her attention. The lake, maybe? Light bounces between the trunks. “Something's moving there.” She points. 

“Lyon's place?”

There's no fence around the park. They could keep driving and start from the shed when they find it, or park on the shoulder and wind their way through the woods. “What did the note say?”

“What note?” Booth's voice is distant, distracted. He hits the brakes and the Crown Vic lumbers onto the shoulder. 

“The note Kiera Dryden left you,” Tempe says, turning to unbuckle her shoulder belt. 

Booth is still. A massive scowl has settled on his face as he stares at his own hands on the wheel of the Crown Vic. “I don't know.” He keys the mic. “Watkins?” And after a second, “Alvarez. Booth. I need a location on Lyon's property near the park.” He listens before saying, “Did you find Dryden's note to me?”

Ashford's legs appear beyond Booth's window. Booth unbuckles and shoves the door open, but remains seated. Tempe gets out, watching for the weak light she'd seen wavering through the trees. A light breeze of the lake is stirring the pines, but the silence is still profound. No traffic noise, no barking dogs. If not for the glow in the sky hiding the stars, Tempe could dismiss the fact that she was standing in a city of sixty-thousand.

Ashford makes a hissing noise and when she looks, he gestures her to come around the cover of the car. His eyes never stop scanning the woods. He's left his rifle in the car, but has his pistol in both hands. 

Booth hits his mic. “Ten-four. We're a half mile down Gibson from Sweeney, on the shoulder. We're entering the property from here. We'll rendezvous at the maintenance shed if we come up empty-handed.” He's silent and then says, “Roger that.” He climbs out and eases his door shut. “The maintenance shed is three hundred yards from the entrance, on its own paved access.” 

“There,” he adds, and points. “At two o'clock.” 

The woods seem thinner there. Threads of light. A faint rumble rolls from that direction. Tempe can't make out if it's a tractor or not. “What'd the note say, Booth?”

“The note!” Ashford exclaims.

“Coordinates in North Carolina.” He pulls his Glock and checks the clip as he talks. “Watkins called it in and a team's already scrambled.” 

“In, Bones,” he says, opening the driver's door again. He's stony Booth, the Booth that made her leave all those bones in the woods of Savage State Park, so she doesn't argue with him.

He hands her the keys, but holds onto to them when she tries to take them, and finally meets her eyes. “Thanks,” he whispers. He looks wounded in some way she doesn't understand. She sees Ashford shift on his feet, and shake his head.

“Sandoval is not your fault, Booth.”

He smiles. It's the one that means she's amused him in some way, but it doesn't reach his eyes. He says, “I know that, Bones,” and lets go of the keys.

He nods at Ashford. They angle into the trees, running crouched, aiming themselves onto a trajectory that will intersect the lights of the slow-moving maybe-tractor. 

***

The pine needles under the soles of his work loafers are slick. Booth keeps his gun up and his head down. Accepting blame is a habit of his stretching back to childhood. An Army therapist pointed it out to him after a man died on his watch. Said it made for good big brothers, but bad soldiers. He's surprised Bones can see him doing it, though, and the deaths of Private Parker and Danny Ghilley, among others, are still his fault, even if he can lay this Lumbee-gangbanger war on doorsteps other than his own. He steps into and then out of the darker than dark shadow of an old oak, and then weaves by feel between saplings and shrubby undergrowth.

He wants to use his small Mag-Lite, but doesn't want Keira, and whomever else might be wandering around out here, to know their exact position. The flashing lights they rode in on are enough of a warning that they are in pursuit. The moon will be full, but it's not high enough to help, yet. Ashford seems solid, tracking along silently to the side and slightly behind him. The rough cough of an engine echoes through the stand of full-leafed maples ahead, followed immediately by a resounding crack and metal hitting metal. Someone shouts.

Booth checks himself. Ashford comes neatly aside, tilting his head without looking away from the target, waiting for Booth's lead. Gun steady in his right hand, Booth stretches out his left arm, palm down, intent on sending Ashford up the stand in front of the commotion, while he takes the rear. 

Ashford raps Booth's wrist. The bone snapple-cracks and shoots white-hot flame up his arm. He folds up, catching the gleam of moonlight off a thin metal rod and looks up into an oncoming fist. His face explodes. 

Staggering back, he keeps his feet. Ashford punches at his face again, but Booth ducks, gets his arm up under Ashford's and the flat of his hand across the broad of Ashford's neck. His head forced down, Ashford stumbles forward. He grunts and twists and they are both airborne. 

Booth's breath is driven from his lungs on a hoarse yell as Ashford lands on top. He scissors his legs, wrenching his upper body over, black spots filling his vision and Ashford shouts, his backbone creaking loud in Booth's ears. He gives and then Booth is on top, his chest burning. Ashford drives the heel of his hand up under Booth's jaw to a sickening crunch. 

Hands are grabbing him, his arms, tugging at his shirt, snugging under his pits until he's being bodily pulled off Ashford, dragged backwards, left knee popping funny as his legs straighten and he's jerked away. 

“Fucking trash,” someone says. 

On his back on the ground, Ashford growls and spits blood onto his chin with a wicked grin. 

“Load the Fed with Unit Two.”

They haul Booth up, but don't let him get his bearings or his feet moving under him, instead supporting him in a jostling rush to a white van with its side door yawning open. There are blue tubs stacked outside, waiting loading. A roughed-in two story house, pale wood and tar-paper, glints of glass, looms to his left. 

A peculiar compression of Booth's eardrums a fraction of a second before the whine of a bullet grazing along the van's side has him ducking from the sharp report of the gun before he's even aware he's doing so. The sound never comes.

“Shit,” a man's low voice mutters directly in his ear.

He can't get his hands up as they shove him in, already spinning away, and pain bursts up his arm and through his collarbone. He turns his head, his nose bumping along the rough carpet and his face throbs and breaks into a million shards. Something cool brushes past his face as it's picked up from the floor of the van. 

“Bolts,” someone commands and there's someone else scrambling over his legs. He tenses everything and holds still. The man, it's a man, passes weapons out over him and departs. 

Booth hitches in a breath, pushes himself up on his good arm. Blood rushes from his head and he sways.

Although it's nearly silent and all he can see is shadows, it's a battle he's witnessing. He has no doubt of that. He edges his legs out of the van, gets his boots flat on the soft dirt of Sam Lyon's half-built drive and stands; for a moment.

***

Tempe's staring into the dark, waiting for movement of some kind. The weak light buried in the woods is steady. She jumps when her phone rings. “Brennan,” she says, not wanting to look away, check the caller ID, in case Booth needs her.

“Hey, sweetie, can you talk?”

“I'm waiting on Booth,” she says.

“The FBI's relayed the identifications of the eight contemporary sets of bones you recovered from Douglas Point. Two of them matched Lumbee girls on the Missing list. Three are missing Lumbee boys. Two are suspected to be caucasian teen girls missing from Albemarle, North Carolina and Lancaster, South Carolina. They were on Henson's suspected list. The last is Terry Hiron, a Federal Park Ranger missing since 2004. And then there are the corpses autopsied at Bethseda; the woman and one of the men are MS-13 members from Philidelphia. The other man is out of Charlotte.”

“MS-13?”

“They're still trying to connect him. Zach and Hodgins are analysing the cross-bolt samples found at Danny Ghilley's cabin.”

“They found it?”

“The cabin? Yes, on seventeen hundred acres, and get this, it's off the grid. He was using solar panels and hydro-power. Jack's dying to get his hands on the carbon fiber work he was doing. The knives are works of art.”

“Seventeen hundred acres?” she echoes, but she's remembering Mrs. Bell's kitchen, Kiera Dryden talking about purchasing the knives Danny made at his cabin out on the swamp. They'd asked for invoices or shipping addresses or something and Robert Dryden had said, 'Sarah can fax them.' 

“Owned by a paper company, but that's probably just the first layer. Jack's certain they'll claim he was squatting.”

The woods are silent. Three cars, their drivers' curious faces washed blue and red in the flashing lights of the Crown Vic and Ashford's truck, have cruised by during their conversation. Sarah Martel is Lumbee. She is Ms. Pine. Temperance is certain of that fact. She was at Samuel Lyons's house, emotionally distraught, after Kiera Dryden came and went. She's married to a member of MS-13. All those facts converge into a lot of answers if she is also Kiera's part-time clerk. 

“Bren?”

“Booth's been too long.”

“Did he have back-up?”

“Yes, but it's been too long. I'm going to drive to the rendevous point he set up.”

“Be careful, sweetie.”

Tempe hits end, starts the car and cautiously makes her way to the Gibson entrance. A local with his lights on and a dark, low-slung car on his heels whips past her. She turns in, by-passes the boat ramp and swings onto the narrow access marked 'employees only'. Two FBI vehicles, one of the SWAT SUV's, a local police car and a park service truck, doors standing open, are parked every which way near the lit-up three bay equipment shed. The locals raise 'stop now' left hands at her, twitchy right hands on their gun butts. The agents are in the shed, one is searching the ground along one side. All three bays are filled, there's a bobcat, and two beat-up tractors with buckets. Tempe rolls to a stop. 

“Ma'am?” one of the Reston policemen says when she pops out.

As she identifies herself. Watkins sees her and trots over, searching the Crown Vic over her shoulder. “Agent Booth?” he snarls.

“He's not here?”

“Found the access onto Lyon's property, through there.” he says, pointing. “Could see your lights from there. No suspect, no Booth. I have two agents following the trail to the construction site. And two more entering from the road. There's recent activity- maybe as many as four or five people trampled through there. Had to have a vehicle stashed somewhere. What was the name of that agent he was with? From Maryland?”

“Ashford.”

Watkins face crinkles up in disgust. “I knew that was right. FBI's never heard of 'im.”

Tempe's stomach turns itself inside out.

“Dr. Brennan?”

 


	28. Chapter 28

 

Watkins is shifting from foot to foot, waiting for word from the teams he sent to check Sam Lyons' property, waiting for an answer to Tempe's question regarding Sarah Martel and whether or not she worked for Kiera Dryden as her store clerk. When Tempe steps around him to look at the tractors, he follows. An agent is prowling the walls with the Park Service employee, doing a visual inventory, looking for things out of place.

“Is this Lyons'?” she says, stopping at the middle tractor. It looks older than the other, with rounded lines and an old-fashioned looking steering wheel, big and thin. The bucket's obviously not part of the original. 

Watkins nods, listening to someone else in his ear. “No, Sweeney's too far. Double-back. Greg's got visual on the light,” he says, voice tight, and strides back toward his SUV, motioning at the officer working at the computer inside.

The engine's cold. She circles it, inspecting every angle and connection. There's no locked cab or tool box on it. She can't imagine why Kiera Dryden took the keys.

The shed-exploring agent stops beside her, his hands deep in his pockets and regards the tractor, a frown pulling deep creases into his worn face. “Snipe hunt,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

He nods his chin at the tractor. “She sent us snipe hunting.”

Watkins shouts from across the way. The agent outside echoes him and then they both begin speaking low and fast into their radios, appearing unaware of their surroundings. Two SWAT team members appear out of the woods at a dead run. 

“Bodies next door,” Watkins calls out. Tempe's mouth dries out, and her stomach fills with lead. “Campbell, are you taking point, here?” Campbell, standing next to her, nods, and reaching out, brushes her elbow in a 'go on, then' gesture that gets her moving. 

“Dr. Brennan, Archie here will drive you,” Watkins adds over his shoulder, already turning to talk to his officers.

Her fingers are weak when she pulls on the handle, but she gets the door open and has the keys in her palm by the time Archie, Watkins' right-hand, disentangles himself from his communications gear in Watkins' SUV and slides into Booth's car. 

*

There's a gate standing open fifteen yards down the dirt drive, the cut chain dangling. It's the unlit road she had noticed on their way in on Gibson. If only they had known it was Lyons', they may have been in time to stop whatever's happened. It's pitch-black under the winding drive's canopied trees.

Watkins brakes hard in front of them. The local cop's car and his shadow are parked one behind the other dead center in the drive. Watkin's little convoy stops, one after the other, their sirens dying, and everyone gets out. There's light around the next bend and voices. Tempe walks fast. Archie breaks into a jog and then they are all running. 

There are no cars, only bodies sprawled under the thin, steady buzz of a security light. The house beyond them is a patchwork of unfinished wood, paper siding, and stickered glass. A long slope of glavinized metal that is the wrap-around porch roof bounces moonlight back into the night.

The local is sitting, with an agent crouched beside him. The other two advance men are coming back around front from the back of the house, holstering their pistols. 

“Booth, Ashford, Dryden?” Watkins barks.

“No, sir.”

Tempe takes a deep breath

Watkins points at the local. “What happened to him?” 

“We were overcome, sir,” the same agent answers. He's brawny and fair. He flicks his gaze down and licks his lips. When he glances back up, the light sticks on the guilt in his dark hazel eyes. “Um, the crossbows?” He sweeps his hand at the five bodies scattered across the yard. “We were tied together. I may have, um, dislocated his shoulder?”

“You saw them, Turner?”

“Yes, sir. Just two of them.”

“Vehicles?”

“No, sir, but I heard motorbikes.”

Watkins begins calling in the troops. 

***

Booth wakes up choking on blood. He rolls over on his side, gags and coughs and spits, his head heavy and hurting. He peels his eyes open. The light that lashes at them through their swollen lids, doesn't reveal anything the least bit useful to him. He closes them, lets his head loll over until it's resting on the humming, vibrating floor beneath him, and just concentrates on breathing.

“He bes awake,” a man says. “Should've left 'im there.”

“This bes quicker. Will's mark'in that MS basterd's book. Feds might not never find it on their own.”

“Hush,” Kiera says, the word dropping on him from above. “He's listening.” 

Cool fingers stroke his cheek, stray across his hairline. Booth lifts his arm, to brush her soothing touch away, but it's too heavy and then he's sliding into the dark on the soft trail of her fingers and the murmur of her voice. 

She pinches him. He struggles against the weight of his exhaustion and sinks. Pain blooms behind his eyes, she's pressed a fingertip to the bridge of his nose. He coughs, blood dripping onto the floor of the van, and bats at her. “That's better,” she says, and pats his shoulder. 

***

Sitting in Booth's car with the door open, Tempe's waiting for Angela to come get her. Watkins doesn't have men to spare and won't let her drive off in an FBI vehicle, or she'd be back at the scene to talk to Sarah herself, already. Four of the dead men are MS-13, as evidenced by their tattoos, which vary from blatant to a tiny Mara Salvatrucha inked along the back of an ear. Under better light, she bets she could find the fifth man's mark as well. Instead of kicking information out of Sarah, she's cobbling together logical inferences, trying to line up the chronology of this convoluted case in the same way she might lay out a fractured skull, in order to form theories they can test against the evidence already collected.

The scene dissection is only just starting and will take hours to complete. Tempe swears she can feel Booth slipping further away every second. Why did they take him? Lyons' had a steel trap of a basement built into the foundations of the house; literally. The presumed killers of the gang members in the yard apparently tore the steel doors right out, taking a large amount of concrete block and board framing with them. A quarter of the houses' right side is a gaping hole. The doors are lying, wrinkled and warped, between two pines. If the purpose was recovering further Native remains, maybe the ones Lyons had most of his investment riding on... why take Booth?

Watkins appears from around the bend, walking slow, rubbing his hand across his forehead in a repetitive motion as he talks on a cell phone. He comes to stand in front of her while he wraps up the call, nodding and saying yes, ma'am, that's right, ma'am, yes, ma'am. He thumbs a button on the phone and drops his hands, looking weary. “They found the bikes,” he says. “Stripped. In a ditch in front of the Auto Mall. I wish they'd stolen something, but they didn't.”

Tempe nods.

“Sarah Martel is Dryden's clerk. Her interview from Agent Booth's MS-13 case is being pulled. She's not talking. SAC Santana will be taking over on her arrival at Hoover.”

Tempe nods again. Her skills are unwanted here. Unneeded. She's rarely at a loss for action. It's an unpleasant sensation. Her phone rings once and when she glances down, the cool rush of relief is refreshing. The text is from Angela. It reads: Here. Can't get through.

She waggles the phone at Watkins and shoulders her bag. 

“Agent Booth is a wily one, Dr. Brennan,” Watkins says and stretches out his arm.

Tempe shakes his hand. “Yes,” she says, but then her throat closes on her. “He is.”

She turns away and hikes out the dark drive to Gibson Road and Angela. 

***

“Stop,” Booth groans, but it sounds more like 'nggh' when it hits his ears.

“I'm sorry,” Kiera says. Booth can tell she doesn't mean it. “Stop falling asleep.” 

"Drugs?"

"We're not Sam Lyons."

Her voice is directly above his head, but when he tries to look at her, there's nothing but darkness. He swipes at his face. 

“Ice, Agent Booth.”

As soon as the words settle on him, he can feel the cold. The pressure in his face is unbearable. He stays his hands, though. He's still in the van, he thinks. There's the rush of road below him, the shiver of the chassis, space around him. Joan Jett's singing I love rock and roll, so put another dime in the juke box, bebe... “Got a dime,” he croaks.

“For what, Agent Booth,” she sighs.

“You,” he gasps, and winces, and that hurts so fucking... her hands meet his as he brings them to his face. Even his hands hurt.

“Breathe,” she says.

He does, takes deep breaths, tries to let the fight in him drain away on Joan Jett and the hush of the tires spinning below. “When did you know,” he asks when he can speak again.

“When you said MS-13 out loud. Sarah has been... vocal... about her interest in our Lumbee heritage. The Guard didn't know it was her.” Kiera's quiet. Booth wonders if the men with them can hear her confession.

“Why use your mini-van?”

“We didn't. MS-13 did, after we recovered the old ones from Lyon's house on South Irwin.”

“Killed their own guys.”

“Dug up dead thieves.” 

“Do you have to kill me now?” he huffs.

He can hear the smile in her voice. “No. My word against yours, and you're totally dreaming this up, Mr. Concussion.”

She's silent and he drifts, unable to catch another thought, though he knows he has questions.

She lifts the ice pack and readjusts it. New spikes of agony spear him into higher brain function.

“Awake,” he says, his tongue tangling.

“Sarah didn't know. Someone must have told her.”

Stratton, that bastard; Danny's voice, nearly drowned by the helicopter's beat in Booth ears. Blood spilling across a throat, water washing it away. Rushing in over his thighs, his feet sliding against the slick river-bottom rocks, swirling up into his chest, into his head in a roar of whitewater.

 


	29. Chapter 29

A car growls around the curve in the drive ahead of her. Tempe raises her hand to shield her eyes and steps onto the narrow grass strip to the side. It plows to a stop beside her and Agent Henson peers up at her through the open driver's side window. “She'll only talk to you, she says.”

“Who?”

“Sarah Martel. You know she worked for the Drydens?”

“Yes, but she was very confident of herself in the lab.”

“Double majored in biology and anthropology. She worked two summers at the Field Museum in Chicago and was registered to start her graduate work this summer.”

"She must have known about the cemetery. MS-13 provided the manpower, and Sam Lyons agreed to fence the remains to the international antiquities market. He needed provenance, even to the black market.”

“But why would Lyons need you, Dr. Brennan? He had a house full of bones. He could've manufactured provenance. Why bother? And how did he arrange it? Time it to get you? Through Stratton?” He hits the steering wheel with both hands. “I've checked the logs and the film. That doesn't work.”

“Booth and I think the oldest remains were Lumbee ancestors, including Europeans.”

“Yeah. Roanoke,” he huffs. “Read Booth's vagued up progress report. And what, Ghilley's 'Guard' was protecting them?”

“Yes.”

He waves her around. “Get in.”

She does, while calling Angela. His car reeks of smoke and fast food wrappers crunch under her boots. He throws it into reverse, and hits the flashers. Out on Gibson, Angela's standing beside her car, next to a mountain of State Trooper. She waves and says “Be careful,” into the phone at the same time as Henson slews the car sideways, crams the gearshift up, and punches the accelerator. Something grinds in protest, but then they are shooting forward. 

Tempe hangs up and faces Henson, who toggles the siren on before digging a cigarette from a crumpled box of Winstons. He tucks the it in the corner of his lips, corners hard onto Sweeney, and then starts patting his pockets for a light. “You mind,” he grates.

“Yes,” Tempe says. “I do.”

He gives her a gimlet eye, assessing her level of humor, she supposes, and then crumples the cigarette in his fist. “What.”

“Where were you? Booth went into the woods with a fake FBI agent who turned up in your place, and now he's missing.”

“I got locked in a bathroom.”

It's so not what she's expecting that the words make no sense. Henson steers them around a pick-up truck that's half-pulled off the road for them, swerves to the right to get by a Volvo and turns right onto Seneca, headed for the beltway.

“I got locked in a bathroom at a Jiffy-Mart. Concrete block, no reception. I banged on that door for twenty minutes, I ain't kiddin'. They had to drill the lock out. And then I had two flat tires. My only question is, Lumbee or MS-13? 'cause they're the only guys on my agenda right now.”

***

For the thousandth time, she hurts him to keep him awake. Booth doesn't think he could sleep now if he wanted to, which he doesn't. It's his fucking body that keeps zoning away on him. it doesn't help that his eyes are heavy as stones, that his wrist is throbbing, and that the van is still hurtling along through darkness except for the strobing lights of passing cars or highway lights when they pass through towns.

Except for her “You awake?” and his varied responses, they haven't spoken anymore. The men's voices are only murmurs except when they answer the phone and then their answers are too short, coded, or accented for him to follow. 

“Hey,” one of the men says. “They's muffed getting the girl. They's headed to him now.”

Near as Booth can figure, Kiera's sitting perpendicular to him, at his head, her legs stretched out acoss the van. She draws them up. “Sarah didn't know. How did Eppy and TJ?”

Again, that image of blood across a throat comes to him, and the road sounds like rain.

***

The Bureau is chaotic with activity. As Henson whisks her through, Agent Baker leading the way, Tempe glances towards Booth's corner office. The door is standing open and the blinds are open. An intern so young that's he's still tow-headed blonde is tapping industriously on Booth's keyboard, while a woman who can only be a lawyer looks over his shoulder.

Tempe has no words for the urge that she feels to go usher them out and slam the door. 

“Dr. Brennan,” Cullen says, joining their march to the interview rooms. “We're going to try putting Agent Baker in with you. He's got the Ghilley case, so he's familiar with the house on South Irwin owned by Lyons.”

Tempe shrugs, looking up at Henson. 

He smiles back. “Pissed her off already.”

“Look,” Cullen says. “We need confirmation regarding the identity of the group or the people who held you in captivity and if Sam Lyons was in charge. We need to know her level of complicity, and work from there to make connections.” 

Junior Agent Samuels is standing guard at Sarah's door. He gives her an earnest look. “I'm sorry I let Mrs. Dryden out of my sight, Dr. Brennan. If I'd stayed with her, we wouldn't have lost Agent Booth.”

“He's not lost, Agent Samuels, he's just not found.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he utters, seeming completely unconvinced. 

*

Sarah is grim. She's staring blank-eyed at the cuffs around her wrists, which are run through a bar in the table. She doesn't look up until Agent Baker clears his throat and says, “I believe you've already met Dr. Brennan?”

She tilts her head up, and her expression lightens. The chain between the cuffs clinks when she tries to raise her hand to tuck her long hair back behind her ear.

Tempe isn't sure where to start. Booth usually does that, or cues her beforehand. She pulls out a chair and sits. She'll start at the beginning, then, like Sarah is a lab work-up. “You are Ms. Pine, correct?”

Sarah just stares at her. Her lips form a straight line of non-communication. 

“You were working with Sam Lyons.”

Although her expression is neutral, her eyes are unfathomable to Tempe. Booth would know the emotions there by name and adeptly play them.

“You asked to speak to me, Sarah,” Tempe tries. She acts like she's going to stand. “I'll go request a lawyer for you.”

“No,” Sarah whispers.

“I'm not...” Tempe's at a loss. “...very good at this. I can't just guess, Sarah.”

“Did she take her?”

“Did whom take who?” Tempe says, although that, yes, she can guess that.

Sarah nods. “You know... the child.”

“I don't know.”

“She took the keys.”

Give a little, get a little, that's what Booth been teaching her, right? “I can't give you that information, Sarah, until you give me some.”

Agent Baker snorts. Sarah glares at him.

“You gave information about the burial site at Douglas Point to MS-13 through your husband.”

“I didn't know about it. They came to me.” She clamps her mouth closed and narrows her eyes. If she weren't cuffed to the table, Tempe thinks she'd cross her arms for good measure. 

Tempe schools her face, not wanting Sarah to see her confusion. “Who came to you?” 

Sarah shakes her head.

“I examined the tractor, Sarah. I saw nothing,” Tempe says. She lets her gaze drift as she recalls the tractor, the faded paint, the scraped rear fender, the decades newer bucket, and then shakes her head, finding Sarah's eyes again. “Out of the ordinary. No one drove it anywhere to use it.”

Sarah's hair hides her face when she looks away, biting her lip. Tears are welling in her eyes.

“Who came to you, Sarah, to make the deal with Sam Lyons?”

“MS-13,” she bites off.

“Your husband? His cousin, Eppy?”

She draws a sharp, shuddering breath, and her eyes are wide when she focuses once more on Tempe. Her cheeks are wet and there's a perfect tear beaded on the corner of her lip until she speaks. “Is TJ okay?”

Agent Baker trades glances with Tempe, his shoulders rising a bare millimeter. 

“I'll find out, if you tell me who approached you regarding...”

A sharp knock stops Tempe mid-sentence; Henson bursts into the room. “Gotta go, c'mon, c'mon...” he say, holding the door open and flapping his arm around. 

Jumping up so hard, his chair slides back into the wall with a solid thunk, Agent Baker trips over his own feet and stumbles through the door. 

Tempe scowls at him and turns back to Sarah Martel. She's crumbling. “They're already looking for your husband, Sarah. For questioning. Do you know where he is?”

Hands twisted tight together, perched on the edge of her chair, hair hiding her face, Sarah shakes her head. 

Henson makes an impatient noise. 

Sliding her chair back slow, Tempe gets up.

Sarah tracks her movement. For the first time, she looks desperate to Tempe. Impossibly young and desperate. “TJ and Sam promised me.”

“What did they promise you?”

“That she was mine. For me to...” She stops herself.

For her degree, Tempe realizes; maybe for her eventual doctoral thesis, maybe to gain a foothold into a career in cultural or forensics anthropology. When the first of the MS-13 gang members died six months ago, apparently testing the validity of their information, or maybe taking samples to Lyons... “You are... you're a fool, to believe that you could... you committed felony kidnapping, you're an accessory to theft of human remains and murder...”

“Dr. Brennan,” Henson says, his voice cutting through her loss of words and Sarah's undulating, high-pitched cries.

Spinning, Tempe strides out of the room, scooting around Henson, who lets the door fall shut and cut off Sarah's sobs, and runs full-tilt into Samuels. He grabs her arms to steady her. She's spitting mad and tries to twist away from him. She needs a moment. He hangs on. Throwing one hand onto his forearm and the other at his shoulder, she darts under and around, pulling his arm neatly up behind his back, and speaks to the back of his head. “Don't.”

Letting go, she turns and brushes past Baker, who's backed up against the wall, his hands up and open as she goes by.

At the door to the elevator, she closes her eyes and takes two deep breaths before she straightens her shirt and pulls the lanyard holding her ID badges back into place. Henson steps up beside her. “I know where they got their info.”

Tempe raises her brows in question.

“My informant. He cracked Jack Stratton for his info at Douglas Point. He was MS-13. Obviously, Stratton told him more than he told us, and judging from time of death on some of those guys, he knew months before he shared with us. Got their plan all in place first. Still don't know why anyone would fuss so much over a few old bones, though.”

“On the antiquities black market, some of those bones would be quite valuable.”

“Crazy old coots with too much money. I like straight up murder, the paperwork's easier. Are we ready to go now?” Without waiting for her answer, he punches the down button with his thumb.

“Where are we going?”

“Seems someone murdered Eppy Sandoval before Agent Robert Dryden could do it. It ain't so straight up, so Cullen suggested you ride along.”

“He's afraid I'll go looking for Booth, ” she says dryly as the doors slip open and they step inside.

“More afraid you'll find him, whether you're looking or not,” he says, holding the doors open with one meaty hand. “ 'sides that, he's afraid Samuels can't keep up with you by himself. C'mon, boy.”

The boy does, rubbing his upper arm. “I'm supposed to keep you safe, ma'am.”

“I'll try to keep that in mind,” Tempe says.

 


	30. Chapter 30

 

It's a courtyard motel off the beltway, one of the old ones, single story, concrete block, with wavy glass windows peeking from behind rusting bars. The cars in the lot that aren't law-enforcement related are American-made in the eighties and nineties. Yellow tape's already been strung and there's a beer-toting crowd from the neon-lit club next door keeping tabs on the operation.

Henson talked non-stop on the ride. He can't believe he didn't think of the informant earlier and he hopes Baker can get Sarah to spill about the players at Douglas Point, whether they were MS-13 gangmembers or professional help that Lyons hired, or both. The more information and names they have, the more leads they'll have into locating Booth. 

Two teams are working off Tempe's original assumption that Kiera was after more of the remains stolen by Lyons, and assuming Booth and the imposter he was with met up with her. They're correlating the Douglas Point, Stratton, Ghilley, Lyons, and Dryden cases and working with Watkins. A third team's working his disappearance from ground zero – where he left Tempe in the Crown Vic- and started with the abandoned FBI-issue Yukon, which had stolen plates, and a sanded spot where the VIN should've been. They also turned up a witness who saw a panel-sided white van pull out of the drive on the property at the right time. A fourth team is working from Booth's own reports, sifting for connections that might not otherwise be spotted. 

Apparently, with combined knowledge of the concurrent cases, Cullen and the other agents watching gleaned more from the stilted conversation between Tempe and Sarah Martel than Tempe did. She supposes it's the same as when she dissects information and intent from a skeleton that other examiners have missed- an ability to use experience and what may at first seem to be inconconsquential facts to form a bigger picture. And it's also the way she works with Booth.

Her eyes are drawn to the man hunkered down against the wall outside the room involved as Henson wheels his car around and parks it sidelong to everybody else's. She and Booth, they interlock; like the separate information being processed on both sides of the one-way glass of the interview room; like Yin and Yang.

Even though she's only met him once, and his head is down, his hands resting on the back of his neck, she knows the man against the wall is Robert Dryden. And if any couple physically embodies the concept of Yin and Yang more than Dryden and his wife, Tempe hasn't met them, yet. 

Like he's been jumpstarted, Samuels lets his breath go when Tempe opens her door, letting in the scene's frentic pulse of activity and noise, from the bass beat booming out of the club's open doors to the police scanners blaring through open car windows. “That's a lot of blood,” Samuels says from the back seat.

“Objectively speaking,” Tempe says, eyeing Dryden. “It's not. It just goes a long way.”

“It's a lot of blood,” Henson reassures Samuels. “And when it's in your hair like that?” He shudders dramatically.

Tempe shrugs and clambers out ahead of them, curious to see what state Eppy Sandoval is in. Dryden's shaggy blonde hair is bloody because he ran his hand through it. Ditto his neck and cheek as he swiped at them. His boots and jeans to the knee are from kneeling on the floor to vomit, said vomitus in evidence as she holds up her ID and enters the room, accepting the booties the local hands her as she does.

The corpse on the blood soaked floor is, without a doubt, Eppy Sandoval, if the skinned face draped over a mounded pillow at the head of one bed goes with it. Tempe sincerely hopes the FBI lab does their due diligence. Wide strips of skin, in no particular order as to their origin, are laid out across both beds, which are unmade. Yellow tags are propped over each, up to number forty-three. 

Two open duffles and a pile of clothes are strewn across the standard motel chest of drawers and the half-counter by the sink in the back. A tagged rifle rests against the counter, butt on the floor. 

“M40-03,” Henson says over her shoulder. “Might be what took Stratton and Ghilley down.”

“Hmmm,” Tempe says, thinking of carbon-fiber art, Ghilly-made blades. “Did you find the knife?”

“No, ma'am,” the nearest tech answers. “No weapons but the rifle. Had to be a darn sharp blade, though. Or a bagful of scapels.”

“Estimated time of death?”

“Within hours, Dr. Brennan, he's still warm.”

Tempe slides the booties on and then steps over Sandoval's feet and crouches between the beds to inspect him. He was standing when his throat was slit. She suspects he was strangled as well, from the mangled look of the drying tissue, and the pieces of shattered lamp scattered all around him. He fought back. 

***

When the van stops after an eternity of driving and then clatter-banging for what must have been miles down an unpaved road, Booth doesn't fight back as he's unceremoniously dragged to sitting by the front of his shirt. If they were going to really hurt him, they'd have done so long before now.

His head is worthless after the ride, but his face isn't as swollen as it could be, thanks to the pain Kiera did make him endure. They stand him up. His ears fill up with static and his legs go hollow.

“Don't go down, son,” the man to his left mutters. 

“I just hope he don't die 'afore the feds get here,” the other says.

“He's fine,” Kiera says. 

Who are you people, Booth thinks. Salt spray wafts on a humid breeze through his open mouth and onto his tongue. Fuck. If he weren't so exhausted, he'd be worried. 

They walk him down a steep, pitch-black set of stone stairs at the edge of a grassy bunker, letting him work it out, step-by-step. They have a flashlight, he's pretty sure, but it's weak and totally useless to him. He tries to back pedal at the door when it occurs to him where they are exactly.

The guys drag him into the damp dark and sit him down and here he is again, in the same fucking little cell. He lets his pounding head fall back against the wall, swallows the trickle of blood seeping down the inside of his throat, and breathes the wet ocean air in through his mouth. 

Above, the van door slams. Other noises filter down, a curse, something heavy thumps. He can feel her watching him. He swallows again, that image coming to him of a slashed throat. “If Sarah didn't know,” he wheezes. “There was a guy Stratton told. MS-13. He's dead already.”

The men are stumbling down the stairs. They wrestle something bulky through the door and drop it. Booth ignores it and them.

“That's Sarah's,” Kiera says. “Tell my husband I love him.”

“No,” Booth says and means it.

***

“Kiera called,” Robert Dryden says, when Henson asks. He stands, but leans back against the wall like his legs might not hold him. He considers the blood on his hands and then sighs and crosses his arms.

Henson is flipping through the assigned agent's stenobook, scanning his notes. 

“She said she was scared. She said she'd seen Eppy while she was eating lunch on the Mall, that she thought he was following her while she ran errands. The kids... we were only supposed to be at her mother's a couple of days.They needed stuff we didn't pack. But then Eppy... she was too afraid to come back to the house.”

Tempe says, “That's not...”, but Henson touches her lower back, stopping her from revealing the lie.

“She said that Agent Booth told her during the interview that Eppy set you guys up. I'd told her, y'know, about Stratton's dumping victims at Douglas Point, that you guys were kidnapped from there. Eppy's cousin TJ is married to Sarah, who works for us. She talked to Sam Lyons more than Kiera did. I borrowed her Mom's car and came. She wanted me to meet her. She was scared, but she didn't want me to call Agent Booth, in case she was just, y'know, being paranoid.”

“Did you meet her?”

“She didn't show. I called my SAC. He said he'd start making calls, that I should get to Hoover and report it, talk to Agent Booth, but...”

“You knew Eppy and TJ were MS-13.”

“No.” He closes his eyes. “God damn me for not knowing that.”

“You're a pretty piss poor excuse of...”

“How did Kiera know?” Tempe interrupts.

Eyes still closed, breathing deep, Robert Dryden shakes his head.

Henson closes the notebook and slaps it back against the chest of the field agent in charge of the crime scene. “How'd you find Sandoval?”

“Kiera.” Dryden pinches the bridge of his nose before he opens his eyes, but then he's steadier, though his voice quivers with the effort to keep himself together. Tempe takes a deep breath of her own and tries to find her patience. “I was at Hoover, but it was taking forever to see someone, and they said Agent Booth couldn't be reached and some intern was reading my inter-agency request for information and manpower and he wanted the case number and then Kiera texted me. This address and room number. So I left. Figured I'd bring him myself and be done with it.”

Henson turns his head toward the agent standing by. “You verify?”

“Yes, sir. He was at Hoover from nine-oh-seven p.m. to ten-thirty-three. Call came in at eleven-twelve. NCSBI verified as well.”

That meant Kiera was in contact after the FBI lost her, after Booth disappeared. “What time was the text sent?” 

“Ten-twenty-four p.m..”

Dryden's nodding. “I called back. More than once. Her phone's off or dead.”

Her phone was being used, Tempe corrects herself. Kiera might not have been the one using it.

“We already have an APB out on your wife, Dryden,” Henson says. “Agent Booth is unavailable because he went AWOL from a multiple murder while in pursuit of her after she met with Sarah Martel, who Dr. Brennan ID'ed as one of her kidnappers at Douglas Point.” 

Dryden's long legs fold and he sinks back down the wall. 

Henson points at the federal agent. “Don't fuck this up, Fortner, or I'll come from Maryland and shoot you myself.”

 


	31. Chapter 31

 

Tempe taps her pen on her desk, waiting for David to answer. 

“Hallo,” he says cheerfully.

“David,” she says. Tears clog her throat without warning.

“Temperance?” David says, concerned.

She swallows and fights down the breath clawing in her chest, wanting release. She lets it out slow and blinks hard. She takes another deep breath.

“Tempe?”

“I'm okay. Booth's gone. Again.”

“Gone?”

“Taken. Yesterday. They can't find him.” She wants to give him more than clipped words and terseness, but she can't. Keira Dryden's note led to a weapons cache near Fayetteville. Coordinates spray-painted on the wall there led to bodies, presumably more MS-13 members, in a warehouse in Morehead City. Fresh bodies, trucks, weapons, ammo and standard crossbow bolts, two cardboard boxes of bones, and a codebook, but no Booth. The bones are on their way to her, and Booth's young Agent Samuels called to tell her there was a sticky note with 'Booth' scrawled on it stuck between the pages of the codebook. He was whispering, but she doesn't know why. 

“So... you're cancelling for tonight?” He sounds neutral, but cautious. 

She's glad he understands. “Yes.”

“You know, there's nothing you can do to help.”

“Yes, there is. There will be something I can do.” She and Zach have already conclusively matched the weapons used against all the MS-13 victims as Ghilley-made crossbow bolts. They are of a revolutionary design. She's asked Samuels to photograph the page of code and send it to Zach. He said he'd try.

“Call me later, Temperance. Let me know...” There's a rustling down the line and then he sighs. “Just let me know.”

“Okay,” she says, her throat tightening again. She doesn't need Angela to tell her David's wary of her relationship with Booth. So is Agent Samuels. How come no one seems to understand that they are only partners? Partners watch out for one another. 

She sets the phone down carefully. Her desk is piled with all the various forms for individual bone identification work orders and formal requests for examination related to the many, many sets of bones at the house on South Irwin. She shuffles through them, and then pats them together, resolved to borrow a Jeffersonian intern for a few days to sort them all and place them into individual manila files all marked with location and scanned for digital filing and data accumulation. 

The paperless office seems like a goal that the Medico-Legal Lab might never meet.

“Hey,” Hodgins says, skidding in through her doorway. “Look at this.”

***

There's a boy, sitting in the distance, but the sand is cool and the light sweat that's dampened his shirt catches enough of the breeze off the ocean that he's actually kind of chilly under the lowering skies, which are heavy with gathering thunderclouds. The boy gets closer. Booth's feet are heavy as he trudges through the deep sand. He should walk down by the waves, but he can't lose it, and he might fall or open his hands or anything, really, if he walks down there. So he doesn't. 

The boy sees him. He jumps up and waves. Wildly. The rifle slung across his back bounces, he waves so hard, with both hands over his head. And now he's calling to him, “Hey! Daddy, hey!!” 

Booth stops and looks behind him, but he's the only one here on the beach, besides the boy. 

“Parker?” he shouts.

“Daddy!” the boy yells. “Daddy!” He jumps up and down, but doesn't try to come to him.

Booth pushes his legs faster, and then he's jogging, holding it out in front of him. It jumps and jumps, just like Parker. He wants to look at it, but he doesn't want to look away from Parker. What if... what if he looked back up and Parker wasn't there anymore?

His boy. He's almost there. He glances down at it.

“Daddy!” Parker screams from behind him and Booth jerks around, full one-eighty and there, there's Parker behind him... how... he staggers to the side, but doesn't fall. Can't fall... can't lose it, it's Parker's... 

“Daddy,” Parker whispers in his ear.

His heart's beating in his outstretched hand. He's on packed dirt, with loose sand and grit prickling the skin of his arms and the left side of his face. Birds. The occasional car somewhere in the far distance. He tries opening his eyes and the brightness in front of him resolves into a broad back in a white shirt. It's day. He feels like he's outside, but not. Booth lifts his head.

A vertigo-inducing roll of nausea makes him roll too fast onto his belly and his broken wrist bounces off the ground. He groans and retches. He crabs sideways, closer to his companion, to get away from his own blood and mess. He eases back down, only then noticing the field splint encasing his hand and wrist.

The man's neck is thick and clean-shaven. Booth knows his name, he just can't put his finger on it. Beech? Oak? There's blood staining his shirt and something on his neck, a stippling of dots, maybe punctures? Is he breathing?

Reaching out to touch him, Booth's hand shakes. His arm is weak. He brushes his fingers over the skin of the man's throat. He's cool to the touch. Staying prone, on his belly, Booth inches closer. He finds the crevice of the juglar and pushes down. Booth's freezing, his fingers are stiff and cold. He slides them around a bit, searching. The man's dead. The stippling is a triangle of black dots. There's a serpentine of darkness behind his ear, much darker than his skin. 

Closing his eyes, Booth levers himself up onto his hands and knees. When he's steady, he opens his eyes as wide as he can. The initial blurriness subsides faster than before. He stretches and pushes the man's ear lobe forward. MS-13 is tattooed just behind his ear in fancy script and 'mara salvatrucha' is printed above it in tiny block letters along the rear curve of his lobe.

Ashford. The man's name is Ashford. 

And Kiera said he belonged to Sarah Martel.

***

Agent Samuels is waiting on the hood of his car when Hodgins bounces his Mini-Cooper over the two massive speed bumps at the entrance to the Crime Lab's impound lot. Tempe's still surprised that SAC Santana thought to move the tractor from Raleigh Park to circumvent any possible attempts Kiera Dryden or the group she's assumed to be working with might make to move it using the stolen keys.

Agent Campbell, Samuels apprises her as they enter the garage where he's had the tractor moved into a work bay for them, still thinks the taking of the keys was a ruse, and the removal of the tractor a waste of taxpayer's money.

“He said she'd sent us on a snipe hunt,” Tempe says. “But snipe are shorebirds, and we're nowhere near the coast.”

An odd sound escapes Hodgins. He stops, his hands on his knees, choking and coughing.

“Dr. Hodgins?” Tempe asks, reaching out to pat him on the back, but pulling her hand back at the last moment. “Are you laughing?”

Half-standing, Hodgins swipes tears from his eyes and then folds up again. Samuels is grinning. He coughs into his hand when she looks to him for help and then shrugs. Tempe turns on her heel and stalks to the tractor. 

“I'm sorry,” Hodgins calls after her. He trots to catch up. “I'm sorry. It's just... I'd love to take you snipe hunting.”

Dwarfed by the lights, engine winch, and tool boards surrounding it, the tractor looks smaller than Tempe remembers from the day before. She circles it, looking again at its angles and attachments, searching out the welded seams, bolts, and pins. “From what I understand, shooting snipe is of near-mythical difficulty.”

“In this case, Dr. Brennan, it's impossible,” Hodgins says, fetching up at the right bucket arm. He peers at the hydraulic wires that run from inside the arm and up under the seat. “'Going on a snipe hunt' is a southern tradition aimed at getting rid of someone for awhile. It's a wild goose chase.”

“Speaking of,” Agent Samuels says, “Why are we here?”

“It's gotta be the bucket.” Hodgins taps along the arm, listening. “There's no where else that's hollow.”

She agrees. “Can you ask them,” she says, gesturing at the group of curious techs who have stopped working and gathered beyond the bay. “To remove this bucket?”

“We can use the engine wench,” one of them volunteers.

Nodding him in, Samuels waves at the tractor. “Please.”

He's much more polite than Booth. Tempe doesn't think he'll last long with the FBI.

***

The tromp of heavy combat boots coming down a wooden staircase wakes him.

“Clear,” someone shouts.

“Clear.”

Something bumps and scrapes nearby. Light flashes over him. He closes his eyes in defense.

“Got him! Got a body, too!” 

***

Using the power tools, it takes forty agonizing minutes of anticipation for two FBI techs to loosen the bolts and seperate the bucket built for a Ford 3500 from Sam Lyon's 1948 Ford 8N. Hodgins triumphantly pulls the self-locking hydraulic quick connect apart before the techs wench the bucket up and away. 

Almost certainly, the Guard, because Tempe has decided from the evidence she holds in her head that the Guard exists and are taking revenge on MS-13 and Sam Lyons, given enough time, could have utilized the information and keys Kiera Dryden dredged from Sarah Martel to conduct this search themselves.

She's run her hands over every inch of the 8N while the techs sweated and cursed and reconfigured their attack on the after-market bucket. Hodgins closes his eyes and his lips move. Although he doesn't advertise his faith, Tempe's noticed he prays often. She wonders if he is praying that his comparison analysis of the non-standard tractor's photographs against the standard configuration of a collector's edition 8N, on which no one would normally place a F3500 bucket, is correct. Her breath is heavy in her lungs, and her hands ache with the need to touch bone. He opens his eyes, and the confident look he gives her reminds her why she hired Dr. Jack Hodgins. 

They move as one to each side of the bucket. The interior of the bucket arms are narrow and dark. She reaches in, sweeping her fingertips over the whole of the surface surrounding the thick hydraulic lines. Past her elbow, there's a blockage. She walks her fingers around the edges of a piece of cloth and then teases it towards her. “Jack.”

“I got it,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he replies.

They draw out plastic wrapped bundles of cloth simultaneously.

***

It's nearing eight and the Jeffersonian is quiet, most everyone gone for the night. Hodgins is running trace from the linen in the tractor and Angela's bent over the tiny pin-pricked skull from the set of bones they'd found inside it, working clay around the markers Tempe set. She's refused to draw the child's face until after she feels the contours. Virginia Dare. Not that Tempe can ever prove it. Turner Colvin has already filed the paperwork for her return to Douglas Point. He's also filed for historic designation of a family cemetary on private property. The recovered girl child will be the only official occupant until the FBI 'gets off their asses' and finds the rest of his stolen ancestors. Tempe wonders where the Guard has secreted them, and if they will dare to return them to Virginia Dare's side someday; if the small skeleton will once more lie with her mother's.

With Zach, she is beginning work on the second of the contemporary skeletons found at South Irwin. While Zach measures, Tempe examines each piece for irregularities. She is a female, sixteen to twenty years of age. The story of how Sam Lyons came to have her bones is nowhere to be found in the invoices at South Irwin.

Dr. Wolff's team is probably occupied with packaging the identified Lumbee skeletons from Douglas Point for transport to their families for burial. They'll have marked, graphed, photographed, and radiographed every single bone for posthumous evidence against Jack Stratton for Agent Henson, just as she had done for Samuel Lyons. Her notes, also recovered from their hiding place in Lyon's tractor, have been entered as evidence and will also be used as evidence against Lyons and Sarah Martel.

All his victims will forever be memorialized in books and articles and research papers by their connection to Stratton, instead of who they were in life. Tempe knows one of the girls played tennis, probably competitively. That the tallest boy broke his leg as a young child. All eight had something individually distinctive of the way they lived their lives to distinguish them in death. 

Those will be her memory.

Her fingers trail the jut of a sharp ilium on a pelvis that probably never saw motherhood and it reminds her again of the way Ms. Pine stroked the tiny, dry, crumbling pelvis of Virginia Dare. That soft brush of life over death. The true and tempered feel of it is seared into her fingertips and haunts Tempe's dreams. Is that what Booth sees when he watches her? 

The atmosphere of the lab shifts, and when Temperance turns, Dr. Goodman is standing at the foot of the steps onto their platform, looking grave, Agent Samuels at his side. Tempe's heart flutter-thumps. Zach straightens, a femur in his hand, Hodgins stands. Angela's hand floats up and rests on her chest.

“They found him. He's fine.”

“Fine?” Angela says doubtfully.

“Broken wrist and nose, dehydrated and hypothermic, but yes, he'll recover just fine.”

Tempe releases the breath she didn't know she was holding. “Where?”

“An abandoned estate on the Outer Banks,” Samuels answers. 

“Currituck Sound?” Hodgins interjects.

“As a matter of fact,” Samuels conceeds.

“I knew it! I should have used the methyl red.”

“Jack,” Angela says. “Shut up.”

“It was leased under a false corporate name for a three month period by Tad Daniels, AKA Samuel Lyons. Agent Booth identified it as the place where you'd been held. Agent Booth's most recent captors were Lumbees, and included Kiera Dryden. The man who was posing as Agent Ashford is dead. He was Sarah Martel's husband, TJ Martel, AKA Timothy Jesus Martin, mid-level MS-13 lieutenant. He was responsible for Agent Booth's injuries.”

“It is a war,” Hodgins muses. He sits back down.

“That would appear to be the case,” Dr. Goodman agrees.

“MS-13 found out about the cemetary and decided to try the antiquity market. Easy money, right? Only it turns out the Lumbees are actually paying attention to their seemingly abandoned burial ground. The mystery of Roanoke might be preserved by private sales of the bones, but the actual bodies would be desecrated and scattered. The Lumbee Guard acted to protect them.” Hodgins nods to himself, stars in his eyes.

Tempe doesn't understand the need for visiting graveyards, the bones are just bones, after all, but she respects the sanctity of burial grounds, the need for families to know where it is their loved ones rest. 

“So the MS-13... victims... at Douglas Point and scattered all over DC were graverobbers,” Angela says.

“And the Indians shot them with arrows for trespassing and theft,” Zach adds. He looks to Hodgins, and when Jack grins, Zach does, too.

Temperance rolls her eyes. If they were in closer proximity, they'd be doing a high-five. “We have no evidence to support that conjecture in court. Someone used handmade cross-bow bolts to kill three people allegedly associated with Mara Salvatrucha and then buried them within the borders of an abandoned Native American burial ground. Did Deputy Director Cullen mention Kiera Dryden?”

“Whereabouts unknown. Her husband's been extensively interviewed and is not being considered a suspect in Eppy Sandoval's murder or as an accomplice to the murders on Gibson Road and Agent Booth's... whatever.”

Adopting her what-the-hell stance, hand on hip, Angela's eyebrows shoot up. “His whatever?” she says as Tempe says, “What does that mean?” 

“He claims it wasn't kidnapping. Apparently the Lumbees don't think much of the FBI's investigative skills.”

Hodgins laughs. Startled, Tempe looks at him, back at the uncomfortable, tight shouldered Samuels and then laughter bubbles up from her core. Being Temperance Brennan, she tamps it down, but it surges back, riding an image of disgruntled Booth, tromping through the ankle-deep leaf litter along the Savage River and muttering about the incompetence of the modern FBI. She lets it loose.

“I think we all agree, right now,” Angela says, frowning at her.

Still giggling, Tempe nods but suddenly there's a catch in her throat. She looks down and wipes away the tears wetting her cheeks.

 


	32. Chapter 32

 

“Hey, Bones,” Booth says when she clambers out of Booth's repaired Yukon onto the patchy grass parking at Oxenedine Cemetery in Saddletree township, near Lumberton, North Carolina. Samuels has driven it down from Washington on Cullen's approval, to retrieve Booth, assist in the operation, and allow Bones to attend Ghilley's funeral and scan faces and body types while she does so, in hopes of finding another one of Lyons's assistants or Ghilley's accomplices. Booth smiles despite himself, knows it's crooked, and damn it hurts his swollen face, but... Bones.

“Your nose,” she says, her hand rising. He flinches, damn it, even though he knows she wouldn't hurt him. Except, of course, that she might. The doctors proclaimed him lucky. Kiera or someone else in the van had straightened his broken nose. He's glad they didn't leave it to Bones, because she'd totally straighten it herself, without aid of drugs or unconciousness, if she thought he needed it.

“Here,” he says, lifting a thin kevlar vest and holding it up for her to slide her arms through. She does, switching her suit jacket from one hand to the other. Although cast, his wrist protests when he holds on a second too long, the vest sliding from his clumsy fingers. 

Samuels walks past them, scanning the area, taking in the small red brick church, the nineteen empty cars in two ragged lines along the dirt drive as he buckles into his own vest, his head turning, eyeing the cotton fields on the opposite side of the two-lane black top. They stretch to a shrubby, undivided tree line that Booth walked earlier. A little run-off creek trickles between the trees. He grumbles a greeting of some sort at Glenn, who grumbles back from his place lounging against the hood of his own Yukon as he waits for them to get their shit together. Glenn's out of Charlotte and he's been in Pembroke running interviews since the Dryden's Caravan was found on I-95. He's ready to go home.

Satisfied that his guys are alert, Booth focuses his attention on the task at hand. “There's agents at all points, about two hundred yards away, and a couple manning cameras and rifles from high points closer.” He tugs her around so he can check the back.

“I'm not worried, Booth.”

Scooping his thumb across her nape, he catches her loose hair up and pulls it out from under the vest. “You should be.”

“You're here.”

Everything in him stops. He's glad she's facing away from him because the straight line of his lips are pressing against his teeth and it takes a second to work his jaw free to speak as his heart lurches back into action. He jerks the wrinkled ID flap up off its velcro strip and then presses it back down flat. “Lumbees: two of their own, plus assorted MS-13 and probably both Lyons and Sandoval; MS-13: unknown, vicious, liable to take revenge on the Guard in a very public manner ; FBI: zero.”

“That's a kill count. The FBI saves people, like protecting innocents from Jack Stratton.” Her tone is positive.

He tightens her shoulder straps, tugging down harder than necessary. “We could have saved a whole lot more people if we'd gotten him sooner.”

Turning, Bones squints up at him and ignores his knee-jerk comment. “So you don't think Eppy Sandoval is responsible for Stratton and Ghilley's deaths?” Her eyes are distant. She's turning and turning the puzzle of the case, seeking every notch and soft spot.

“They rushed ballastics. It's the right gun, but there's a lot of legwork left to put him in the right places at the right time. I know...” He touches his belly. “Right here, that Ghilley's responsible for Stratton. And Ghilley said the Guard was taking him out. I believe him. Eppy Sandoval's a pasty to throw suspicion off the Guard.”

“Do you think Kiera Dryden's Guard?”

“Yeah. And so is her brother. Glenn here,” he cocks a thumb over his shoulder at Glenn, “has searched every public record in Pembroke, half the small towns nearby, Fayetteville, Raleigh and Washington. Marine Corps Captain Tobias Bell, honorably discharged in 2002, has dropped off the face of the earth. Finding Kiera's going to be difficult. Finding any evidence of the Guard...Dryden was right. It's all whispers and shadows. NCSBI's got nothing.”

“Hunting the Guard's like hunting snipe?” she says, slinging her jacket on over the vest.

This. The unpredictibility of what she might say next makes him miss her when she's not standing right beside him. “Have you ever been on a snipe hunt, Bones?”

She tugs her hair out and over the collar and gives it a little shake that settles it miraculously in place. “Sarah Martel said she didn't know about the cemetary. Is it common knowledge among the Lumbee?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. The Lumbees aren't talking. Glenn's guys say they can't even find out if anyone knew Turner Colvin owned the land at Douglas Point, let alone if they knew about a burial ground. But the informant, the one that got Stratton talking was MS-13 – he knew the location for sure, and who Stratton claimed was buried there. We also have photos of Turner Colvin speaking with the MS-13 out of Philidelphia.”

“Our kidnappers' masks were delivered to Turner Colvin's address, on Samuel Lyon's orders to Kiera Dryden.”

“Or Sarah Martel's. Colvin's not straight up honest, but I'm guessing from the transcripts that he's being used in this case.” He reaches out and tucks one of the buckle straps on her vest back out of sight and then pockets his cold hands in his slacks and stares back at her. The vest is obvious, but not unless you know what you're looking at... kind of. Not that he really cares if anyone notices anyway.

Her lower lip pouts out as she thinks. He's sure she doesn't know it.

“We'll sort it,” he finally says. “You and I and a dozen field agents in three states will sort every last scrap of evidence and interrogation. Danny Ghilley was a good man, Bones. I want to know why he's dead.”

“I'll tell you, Agent Booth,” a sharp voice says behind him.

Good hand going to the butt of his Glock, Booth spins, lowering his core mass and weighting his center. Mrs. Bell steps from behind the rear of his Yukon. A breath of breeze ruffles her thin, silvery hair, revealing the pink of her scalp underneath. Her empty hands are raised shoulder high. She's wearing a simple black dress, and black sneakers. “I was visiting next door. I'm not big on funerals, you see, and with Kiera missing... I wanted to be here when they scatter his ashes.”

“Sir,” Samuels calls. 

“Your man is four yards behind you, at your five,” Mrs. Bell informs him, amused.“Dr. Brennan has your six. The nice young man back in Kestrel's front yard told me it was fine to walk this way.”

Booth straightens and drops his hand. 

Glenn murmurs into his radio. They aren't miked, they're not trying to be discreet here, just prepared for trouble. There are units parked down Oak Grove Chuch Road in both directions, in plain view. 

A hawk screes overhead and then drops low, inspecting them before soaring away in a sudden gust. 

Bones' shadow envelops him. “Mrs. Bell,” she says, holding out her hand. 

Mrs. Bell takes it in both of hers. “I'm glad you're safe, dear. Sarah's family says the FBI is claiming she played a role in your abduction.” 

“They are correct,” Bones says, missing Mrs. Bell's cue for more info, using the plural they, and a surge of affection for her catches Booth off guard. He coughs into his fist to clear his throat.

“Why is Daniel Ghilley dead?” Bones asks. To Booth's ear, it sounds like a rhetorical question. Danny deserves more. He clenches his teeth together to keep his mouth shut.

“Because he believed that there is more complexion to human life as a whole than the simple being of the individual.”

He's still processing when Bones nods like she understands. “The greater good.” She glances up at him. “Every soldier's belief.”

And when she puts it like that, yes, he understands; although the denial is already rising in his throat. He swallows it. The good ol' USA and the Lumbee Nation both are better off without Jack Stratton, did it really matter which Danny died for? “But they killed him,” Booth blurts out. “For doing his what? Duty? Killed him for doing what they asked of him?”

“It was his duty, Agent Booth. Tell me the government of the United States of America has never taken the life of a soldier who's been compromised after completing his duty.”

Booth shakes his head in denial, but stays his tongue because... because Jack Hodgins has compromised his reason, and he's tired, and he just wants to fucking shoot someone related to this case. Then he remembers that he already has. He licks his lips.

Mrs. Bell smiles. 

“You're admitting to knowledge of both Jack Stratton and Daniel Ghilley's murders,” Bones states.

“Of course not, Dr. Brennan, simply offering my opinion of the rumor, based on American mores and gossip within the community and from your agents when my home was invaded and searched simply because my daughter was the victim of car theft, and then became scared when a man she didn't know well pursued her through the streets of Washington into Reston.”

Booth can't wait to see Caroline Julian and Mrs. Bell come face-to-face. 

“The rumor is, of course, ridiculous. Danny Ghilley died because someone,” she says, looking directly at Booth, “... shot him. Eppy Sandoval from what I hear. That boy's been trouble since he hit town.” 

Booth turns his face up to the sun and blows out the breath he didn't know he was holding, before he drops his gaze once more to Mrs. Bell's bright, black eyes. “Mrs. Bell, do you have further information regarding the deaths of Jack Stratton, Daniel Ghilley, Samuel Lyons, Eppy Sandoval or the men found in your daughter's vehicle or any information regarding a domestic, para-military unit called The Guard and its connection to Lumbee Nation?”

“If you are questioning me now, perhaps you'd like to Mirandize me?”

Booth shakes his head. “You do have a son, don't you, Mrs. Bell?”

Mrs. Bell clutches her purse a little tighter. “I do. We've been estranged since his father died. He was working as a fire-jumper in Idaho or maybe Oregon the last I heard of him.”

“You can verify that?” 

“If it becomes necessary, Agent Booth.”

Right. Papers will be manufactured accordingly if need be in the course of wiggling out of this mess. Booth sighs.

“Kiera doesn't know where he lives, either, Agent Booth,” Mrs. Bell says, her voice rougher than it has been. “As I told your fellow agents this morning, I expect you to find her.”

He doesn't know if she's in denial or just being disingenuous. Voices shatter the cool, still air. The church doors are being blocked open and people are trickling out. Boys in khaki slacks and white shirts trot down the steps. 

“Shall we,” she says, sweeping her hand towards the graveyard beyond the church yard and the cars; old, arched grave stones planted in cotton fields bordering North Carolina swamp.

Booth doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to see the last mortal remains of someone who had his back during some of the hardest years of his life consigned to eternity, forever mute despite the questions he's left behind.

He lifts his head, watching the people who knew Danny before and after the years they spent in each other's back pockets spill out through the tall wooden doors of the only church Danny ever spoke about – dinners and songs carried on the summer breeze and fireflies. Danny told him more than once about the night fireflies invaded a mid-summer church social, about filling a mason jar among the headstones of his people's people. At midnight, the kids opened their jars all at once and set the fireflies free, like souls released from their life's burden.

“Booth,” Temperance whispers, sliding her hand under his elbow. His blood stirs. He knows. It's her. And it never will be. Never can be, not if he wants her next to him day to day, helping him find justice for the dead; helpless and wronged, unlucky or unfound, stolen or bought, or simply used, dead by honor or ideology or because someone was having a great idea or a bad day.

“Booth,” Samuels says. 

“Top step,” Glenn calls, already in motion.

Kiera Dryden holds the dark blue box containing Daniel Ghilley in her hands. The Lumbee have spread themselves scattershot across the shallow steps and along the walk into the graveyard.

Booth clears his throat. “Hold,” he says, just loud enough to carry. 

Glenn obeys. The Lumbee are as still as a photograph. 

Kiera meets Booth's eyes, her face serene. He licks his dry lips and glances sideways to gauge Bones' expression. Her hand is loose and unconcerned on his arm, her expression rapt as she soaks in the scene. The sun is angling through puffy clouds sailing the Carolina blue sky, its beams falling on the ivy holding the brick church together. The dark colors of the women's clothes contrast with the men's white shirts and bright ties. A mockingbird calls from the creek across the road and Booth becomes aware of the trilling of cicadas. 

This is their plan, Booth thinks. To carry on. The only dead are confirmed gangbangers, a serial killer, an international fencer of stolen art and antiquities, and one of the FBI's most wanted. Sam Lyon's relatives have nothing to lose by claiming ignorance. Kiera has yet to be definitively placed at Lyon's property on Gibson Road. The FBI's gained new insight into MS-13's operations and shut down two weapons training operations. My word against yours, Mister Concussion.

“They're going to get away with it,” Bones whispers, echoing his thoughts.

Maybe that's okay with me, Booth doesn't say out loud. “Samuels, relay the info. Tell them we'll be transporting Kiera Dryden and Emma Bell. Ask them to find Caroline Julian for consultation regarding the viablity of accessory to kidnapping, assault on a Federal Officer, and murder charges related to the Dryden case... whose case is that?”

“Um, Sir,” Samuels stammers. “I don't know, Sir, yours?”

“Find out whose case it is, Samuels.” Booth turns his focus on Mrs. Bell. To her credit, she doesn't move, though her face tilts upward as he leans toward her, crowding her space. “Emma Boyette Bell, I'm taking you into custody as a person of interest.” 

“All right, Agent Booth. Could you wait until after?”

Booth sees Glenn glance back. He raises his brows in question. Glenn shrugs, and lifts the radio, making sure everyone's on the same page. They still need all the photos they can get for their files. The stuff of whispers and shadows is the FBI's bread and butter. 

He nods at her and Kiera begins to thread a winding path through the resolute patience of her people to the end of Ghilley's road.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some of the stuff I read while researching for this fic- by no means complete, and by no means did I always reference it the same way someone else might have, and by no means did I always stick to the facts or avoid twisting them to my own means :-) The Guard is completely fictional and a figment of my own mind.
> 
> A couple of websites:  
> http://www.lumbeetribe.com/  
> http://www.bigorrin.org/lumbee_kids.htm  
> http://www.native-languages.org/lumbee.htm  
> http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/dialectsofenglish.html  
> http://www.fbi.gov/  
> http://www.ncdoj.gov/About-DOJ/State-Bureau-of-Investigation.aspx
> 
> I lost my good guns for writers site, it was actually a forum :sigh: and looking up 'patrimonial goods' and 'repatriation' laws was interesting...oh! here :-)The Bone Room, http://www.boneroom.com/welcome.aspx?p=FAQ is very fun surfing!
> 
> My MS-13 info mostly came from magazines, but there's quite a lot that comes up on the search engines if you are interested- Inside Prison (http://www.insideprison.com/prison_gang_profile_MS-13.asp), Altered Dimensions (http://altereddimensions.net/2012/ms13-gang), NPR (http://www.npr.org/2005/03/17/4539688/the-international-reach-of-the-mara-salvatrucha), and of course, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_Salvatrucha)
> 
> Books:
> 
> 'Native Root,: How The Indians Enriched America' by Jack Weatherford  
> 'The Only Land I Know: A History Of The Lumbee Indians by Adolph Dial and David Eliades  
> 'To Die Game' by William McKee Evans  
> 'The Eastern Band Of The Cherokees, 1819-1900' by John Finger  
> 'Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony' by Karen Ordahl Kupperman


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